17 

S7  THE    GREAT  W 


ART  ISTS 


UMM^»»M^»J^^ 


J.  M.W.  TURNER:R.A. 


se 


ILL  US  TRA  TED    'BIO  GRAPH  I  ES    OF 
THE    GREAT    QARTISTS. 


JOSEPH  MALLORD  WILLIAM  TURNER 

ROYAL  ACADEMICIAN. 


ILLUSTRATED    BIOGRAPHIES 

OF 

THE   GREAT   ARTISTS. 

TITIAN From  the  most  recent  authorities. 

By  Richard  Ford  Heath,  M.A.,  Hertford  Coll.  Oxford. 

REMBRANDT From  the  Text  of  C.  VOSMAER. 

By  y.  W.  Mollett,  B.A.,  Brasenose  Coll.  Oxford. 

RAPHAEL From  the  Text  of  J.  D.  PASSAVANT. 

By  N.  D 'Anvers,  Author  of  "Elementary  History  of  Art." 

VAN  DYCK  &  HALS       .     From  the  most  recent  authorities. 
By  Percy  R.  Head,  Lincoln  Coll.  Oxford. 

HOLBEIN From  the  Text  of  Dr.  WOLTMANN. 

By  the  Editor,  Author  of  "Life  and  Genius  of  Rembrandt." 

TINTORETTO  .....    From  recent  investigations. 

By  W.  Roscoe  Osier,  Author  of  occasional  Essays  on  Art. 

TURNER From  the  most  recent  authorities. 

By  Cosmo  Monkhouse,  Author  of '"  Studies  of  Sir  E.  Landseer." 

THE  LITTLE  MASTERS     From  the  most  recent  authorities. 
By  W.  B.  Scott,  Author  of  "Lectures  on  the  Fine  Arts." 

HOGARTH From  recent  investigations. 

By  Austin  Dobson,  Author  of"  Vignettes  in  Rhyme,"  &c. 

RUBENS From  recent  investigations. 

By  C.  W.  Kett,  M.A.,  Hertford  Coll.  Oxford. 

MICHELANGELO    .     .    .     From  the  most  recent  authorities. 

By  Charles  Clement,  Author  of  " Michel-Ange,  Leonard,  et  Raphael." 

LIONARDO From  recent  researches. 

By  Dr.  J.  Paul  Richter,  Author  of  "Die  Mosaiken  von  Ravenna" 

GIOTTO From  recent  investigations. 

By  Harry  Quilter,  M.A.,  Trinity  College,  Cambridge. 

THE    FIGURE    PAINTERS  OF   THE   NETHERLANDS. 

By  Lord  Ronald  Cower,  Author  of"  Guide  to  the  Galleries  of  Holland." 

VELAZQUEZ From  the  most  recent  authorities. 

By  Edwin  Stowe,  B.A.,  Brasenose  Coll.  Oxford. 

GAINSBOROUGH  .     .     .     From  the  most  recent  authorities. 

By  George  M.  Brock- Arnold,  M.A.,  Hertford  Coll.  Oxford. 

PERUGINO From  recent  investigations. 

By  T.  Adolf  hus  Trollope,  Author  of  many  Essays  on  Art. 

DELAROCHE  &  VERNET    .     From  the  works  of  CHARLES  BLANC. 
By  Mrs.  Ruutz  Rees,  Author  of  various  Essays  on  Art. 


JOSEPH   MALLORD   WILLIAM   TURNER. 
From  a  sketch  by  John  Gilbert. 


"  TJie  whole  world  without  Art  would  be  one  great  wilderness." 


TURNER 


BY  W.   COSMO    MONKHOUSE 

\^ 

Author  of  "Studies  of  Sir  E.  Landseer." 


NEW  YORK: 
SCRIBNER  AND  WELFORD. 

LONDON : 
SAMPSON  LOW,  MARSTON,  SEARLE,  &  RIVINGTON, 

1879- 


{All  rights  reserved.} 


CHISWICK   PRESS  :— C.  WHITTINGHAM,    TOOKS   COURT, 
CHANCF.RY    LANS. 


PREFACE. 

THE  late  Mr.  Thornbury  lost  such  an  opportunity  of 
writing  a  worthy  biography  of  Turner  as  will  never 
occur  again.  How  he  dealt  with  the  valuable  materials 
which  he  collected  is  well  known  to  all  who  have  had  to 
test  the  accuracy  of  his  statements ;  and  unfortunately  many 
of  the  channels  from  which  he  derived  information  have 
since  been  closed  by  death.  Mr.  Buskin,  who  might  have 
helped  so  much,  has  contributed  little  to  the  life  of  the 
artist  but  some  brilliant  passages  of  pathetic  rhetoric. 
Overgrown  by  his  luxuriant  eloquence,  and  buried  beneath 
the  debris  of  Thornbury,  the  ruins  of  Turner's  Life  lay 
hidden  till  last  year. 

Mr.  Hamerton's  "Life  of  Turner  "  has  done  much  to  re- 
move a  very  serious  blot  from  English  literature.  Very 
careful,  but  very  frank,  it  presents  a  clear  and  consistent 
view  of  the  great  painter  and  his  art,  and  is,  moreover, 
penetrated  with  that  intellectual  insight  and  refined  thought 
which  illuminate  all  its  author's  work. 

He  has,  however,  left  much  to  be  done,  and  this  book 
will,  I  hope,  help  a  little  in  clearing  away  long-standing 
errors,  and  reducing  the  known  facts  about  Turner  to 
something  like  order.  To  these  facts  I  have  been  able  to 
add  a  few  hitherto  unpublished;  and  it  is  a  pleasant 
duty  to  return  my  thanks  to  the  many  kind  friends  and 
strangers  for  the  pains  which  they  have  taken  to  supply 
me  with  information.  To  Mr.  F.  E.  Trimmer,  of  Heston, 


vi  PREFACE. 

the  son  of  Turner's  old  friend  and  executor ;  to  Mr.  John 
L.  Roget ;  to  Mr.  Mayall,  and  to  Mr.  J.  Beavington  Atkin- 
son, my  thanks  are  especially  due. 

In  so  small  a  book  upon  so  large  a  subject,  I  have  often 
had  much  difficulty  in  deciding  what  to  select  and  what  to 
reject,  and  have  always  preferred  those  events  and  stories 
which  seem  to  me  to  throw  most  light  upon  Turner's  cha- 
racter. On  purely  technical  matters  I  have  touched  only 
when  I  thought  it  absolutely  necessary.  This  part  of  the 
subject  has  been  already  so  well  and  fully  treated  by  Mr. 
Ruskin  in  numerous  works,  too  well  known  to  need  men- 
tion; by  Mr.  Hamerton  in  his  "Life  of  Turner,"  and 
"  Etching  and  Etchers  ; "  by  Messrs.  Redgrave  in  their 
"  Century  of  English  Painters,"  and  by  Mr.  S.  Redgrave 
in  his  introduction  to  the  collection  of  water-colours  at 
South  Kensington,  that  I  need  only  refer  to  these  works 
such  few  among  my  readers  as  are  not  already  acquainted 
with  them.  I  would  also  refer  them  for  similar  reasons  to 
Mr.  Rawlinson's  recent  work  on  the  "Liber  Studiornm." 

I  should  have  liked  t0  add  to  this  volume  accurate  lists 
of  Turner's  works  and  the  engravings  from  them,  with  in- 
formation of  their  possessors,  and  the  extraordinary  fluc- 
tuation in  the  prices  which  they  have  realized,  but  this 
would  have  entailed  great  labour  and  have  swelled  unduly 
the  bulk  of  this  volume,  which  is  already  greater  than  that 
of  its  fellows.  Fortunately  this  information  is  likely  to 
be  soon  supplied  by  Mr.  Algernon  Graves,  whose  accurate 
catalogue  of  Landseer's  works  is  sufficient  guarantee  of  the 
manner  in  which  he  will  perform  this  more  difficult  task. 

The  edition  of  Thornbury's  "  Life  of  Turner  "  referred 
to  throughout  these  pages,  is  that  of  1877. 

W.  COSMO  MONKHOUSE. 


CONTENTS. 

PART  I. 
1775  TO  1797.    DATS  OF  EDUCATION  AND  PRACTICE. 


CHAPTER  I. 


Introductory 


Page 
1 


CHAPTER  II. 
Early  Days— 1775  to  1789 6 


CHAPTER  III. 


Youth— 1789  to  1796 


20 


PART    II. 

1797  TO  1820.    DAIS  OF  MASTERY  AND  EMULATION. 

CHAPTER  IV. 

Yorkshire  and  the  young  Academician — 1797  to  1807 

CHAPTER  V. 
The  "  Liber  Studiorum  "  and  the  Dragons 

CHAPTER  VI. 
Harley  Street,  Devonshire,  Hammersmith,  and  Twickenham 


38 


55 


75 


viii  CONTENTS. 

PART  III. 

1820  TO  1851.    DATS  OF  GLOKY  AND  DECLINE. 

CHAPTER  VII. 

Page 
Italy  and  France— 1820  to  1840 92 

CHAPTER  VIII. 
Light  and  Darkness— 1840  to  1851 121 


TURNER. 


CHAPTER  I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

r  I  AHE  task  of  writing  a  satisfactory  life  of  Turner  is 
J_  one  of  more  than  nsual  difficulty.  He  hid  himself, 
partly  intentionally,  partly  because  he  could  not  express 
himself  except  by  means  of  his  brush.  His  secretiveness 
was  so  consistent,  and  commenced  so  early,  that  it  seems 
to  have  been  an  instinct,  or  what  used  to  be  called  by  that 
name.  Akin  to  the  most  divinely  gifted  poets  by  his 
supreme  pictorial  imagination,  he  also  seems  on  the  other 
side  to  have  been  related  to  beings  whose  reasoning 
faculty  is  less  than  human.  When  we  look  at  such  pic- 
tures as  Crossing  the  Brook,  The  Fighting  Temeraire,  and 
Ulysses  and  Polyphemus,  we  feel  that  we  are  in  the  pre- 
sence of  a  mind  as  sensitive  as  Keats's,  as  tender  as  Gold- 
smith's, and  as  penetrative  as  Shelley's  ;  when  we  read  of 
the  dirty  discomfort  of  his  home  and  of  the  difficulty  with 
which  his  patrons,  and  even  his  relations,  obtained  access 

B 


2  TURNER. 

to  his  presence — how  even  his  most  intimate  friends  were 
not  admitted  to  his  confidence — we  can  only  think  of  a 
hedgehog,  whose  offensive  powers  being  limited,  is  warned 
by  nature  to  live  in  a  hole  and  roll  itself  up  into  a  ball  of 
spikes  at  the  approach  of  strangers. 

We  are  used  to  having  our  idols  broken ;  but  we  still 
fashion  them  with  a  persistency  which  seems  to  argue  it 
a  necessity  of  our  nature,  that  we  should  think  of  the  life 
and  character  of  gifted  men  as  being  the  outward  and 
visible  sign  of  the  inward  and  spiritual  grace  we  perceive 
in  their  works.  It  is  this  habit  which  makes  any  attempt 
to  write  a  life  of  Turner  pre-eminently  unsatisfactory,  for 
his  refined  sense  of  the  most  ethereal  of  natural  phenomena 
is  not  relieved  by  any  refinement  in  his  manners,  his 
supreme  feeling  for  the  splendour  of  the  sun  is  unmatched 
by  any  light  or  brilliance  in  his  social  life ;  his  extreme 
sensibility,  a  sensibility  not  only  artistic  but  human,  to 
all  the  emotional  influences  of  nature,  stands  for  ever  as 
a  contrast  to  his  self-absorbed,  suspicious  individuality. 
There  is  of  course  no  reason  why  a  landscape  painter 
should  be  refined  in  manner  or  choice  in  his  habits. 
There  is  no  necessary  connection  between  the  subjects 
of  such  an  artist  and  himself,  except  his  hand  and  eye. 
He  lives  a  life  of  visions  that  may  come  and  go  without 
affecting  his  life  or  even  his  thought,  as  we  generally  use 
that  word.  The  most  tremendous  phenomena  of  nature 
may  be  seen  and  studied,  and  reproduced  with  such  power 
as  to  strike  terror  into  those  who  see  the  picture,  and  yet 
leave  the  artist  unaltered  in  demeanour  and  taste.  Even 
those  men  of  genius  who,  instead  of  employing  their  ima- 
gination upon  nature's  inanimate  works,  devote  themselves 
to  the  study  of  man  himself,  socially  and  morally,  do  not 


INTRODUCTORY.  3 

by  any  means  show  that  relation  between  themselves  and 
their  finest  work  that  we  appear  naturally  to  expect. 

But  all  this,  though  it  may  explain  much,  still  leaves 
unsatisfactory  the  task  of  writing  the  life  of  a  man  of 
whom  such  passages  as  the  following  could  be  sincerely 
written  : — 

"  Glorious  in  conception — unfathomable  in  knowledge — solitary  in 
power — with  the  elements  waiting  upon  his  will,  and  the  night  and 
morning  obedient  to  his  call,  sent  as  a  prophet  of  God  to  reveal  to  men 
the  mysteries  of  the  universe,  standing,  like  the  great  angel  of  the  Apo- 
calypse, clothed  with  a  cloud,  and  with  a  rainbow  upon  his  head,  and 
with  the  sun  and  stars  given  into  his  hand." — Modem  Painters  (1843), 
p.  92. 

"  Towards  the  end  of  his  career  he  would  often,  I  am  assured  on  the 
best  authority,  paint  hard  all  the  week  till  Saturday  night ;  and  he 
would  then  put  by  his  work,  slip  a  five-pound  note  into  his  pocket, 
button  it  securely  up  there,  and  set  off  to  some  low  sailor's  house  in 
Wapping  or  Rotherhithe,  to  wallow  till  Monday  morning  summoned 
him  to  mope  through  another  week." — THORNBURY'S  Life  of  Turner 
(1877),  pp.  313,  314. 

The  contrast  is  too  great  to  make  the  picture  pleasant, 
the  facts  are  too  few  to  make  it  perfect ;  to  make  it  one  or 
the  other,  it  would  be  necessary  to  do  as  Turner  did,  and 
rightly  did,  with  his  perfect  drawings — suppress  facts  that 
jarred  with  his  scheme  of  form  and  colour,  and  insert 
figures  or  mountains  or  clouds  that  were  necessary  to 
complete  it ;  but  a  biography  is  nothing  if  not  real — it 
belongs  to  the  other  side  of  art.  The  task  would  be 
rendered  lighter,  if  not  more  agreeable,  if  we  were  frankly 
to  accept  the  principle  of  a  dual  nature,  and  cutting  up  our 
subject  into  halves,  treat  Turner  the  artist  and  Turner  the 
man  as  two  separate  beings ;  and  there  would,  at  first  sight, 
seem  to  be  no  more  convincing  proof  of  this  duality  than 
is  afforded  by  Turner.  He  had  an  exquisitely  sensitive 


4  TURNER. 

apprehension  of  all  physical  phenomena,  and  was  able  to 
hoard  away  his  impressions  by  the  thousand  in  that  wonder- 
ful brain-store  of  his,  until  they  were  wanted  for  pictures. 
He  stored  them  with  his  eye,  he  reproduced  them  with 
his  hand  and  memory.  These  three  were  all  of  the  finest, 
and  seemed  to  act  without  that  process  which  is  necessary 
to  most  of  us  before  we  can  make  use  of  our  impressions, 
viz.,  the  translation  of  them  into  words.  This  process  is 
as  necessary  for  the  nourishment  of  most  minds  as  diges- 
tion for  the  nourishment  of  the  body,  but  to  him  it  appears 
to  have  been  almost  entirely  denied.  He  had  grasp  enough 
of  his  impressions  without  it,  to  enable  him  to  analyze 
them  and  compose  them  pictorially ;  but  he  could  not  give 
any  account  of  them  or  of  his  method  of  composition,  and 
they  had  no  sensible  effect  on  his  conversation. 

He  thus  lived  in  two  worlds — one  the  pictorial  sight- 
world,  in  which  he  was  a  profound  scholar  and  a  poet,  the 
other  the  articulate,  moral,  social  word-world  in  which  he 
was  a  dunce  and  underbred.  In  the  one  he  was  great  and 
happy,  in  the  other  he  was  small  and  miserable;  for  what 
philosophy  he  had  was  fatalist.  The  riddle  of  life  was  too 
hard  for  his  uncultivated  intellect  and  starved  heart  to 
contemplate  with  any  hope ;  he  was  only  at  rest  in  his 
dreamland.  When  he  came  down  into  this  world  of  ours 
from  his  own  clouds,  he  brought  some  of  his  glory  with 
him,  but  without  any  cheerful  effect ;  for  it  came  but  as 
a  foil  to  ruined  castles,  the  vice  of  mortals  and  the  decay 
of  nations. 

Yet,  while  at  a  first  view  this  distinction  between 
Turner  as  a  man  and  Turner  as  an  artist  seems  complete, 
farther  study  shows  that  the  man  had  a  great  and  often 
a  fatal  influence  on  the  artist,  and  that  this  was  not  without 


INTRODUCTORY.  5 

reaction  both  serious  and  deep,  and  so  we  find  that  his 
art  and  himself  are  no  more  to  be  divided  in  any  hnman 
view  of  him  than  were  his  body  and  his  soul  when  he 
was  yet  alive.  For  these  reasons  we  shall  keep  as  close 
together  as  possible  the  histories  of  his  life  and  his  art,  a 
task  always  difficult  and  sometimes  impossible  on  account 
of  the  scantiness  of  trustworthy  data  for  the  one  and  the 
almost  infinite  material  for  the  other. 


CHAPTER  II. 

EARLY  DATS. 
1775  TO  1789. 

r  I  ^HE  appearance  of  Turner's  genius  in  this  world  is 
J.  not  to  be  accounted  for  by  any  known  facts.  Given 
his  father  and  his  mother,  his  grandfather  and  grandmother, 
on  the  father's  side,  which  is  all  we  know  of  his  ancestry, 
given  the  date  of  his  birth,  even  though  that  was  the  23rd 
April  (St.  George's  day,  as  has  been  so  childishly  insisted 
on),  1775,  there  seems  to  be  positively  no  reason  why  Wil- 
liam Turner,  barber,  of  26,  Maiden  Lane,  opposite  the 
Cider  Cellar,  in  the  parish  of  St.  Paul's,  Covent  Garden, 
and  Mary  Turner,  nee  Marshall,  his  wife,  should  have  pro- 
duced an  artist,  still  less,  one  of  the  greatest  artists  that 
the  world  has  yet  seen.  There  is  only  one  fact,  and  that  a 
very  sad  one,  which  might  be  held  to  have  some  connection 
with  his  genius.  "  Great  wits  are  sure  to  madness  near 
allied,"  sang  Dryden^and  poor  Mrs.  Turner  became  insane 
"  towards  the  end  of  her  days."  This,  however,  will  in  no 
way  account  for  the  special  quality  of  Turner's  genius.  He 
arose  like  many  other  great  men  in  those  days  to  help  in 
opening  the  eyes  of  England  to  the  beauties  of  nature,  one 
of  the  large  and  illustrious  constellation  of  men  of  genius 

1  "  Absalom  and  Achitophel." 


EARLY  DAYS.  7 

that  lit  the  end  of  the  last  and  the  beginning  of  the  present 
century,  and  with  that  truth  we  must  be  content. 

The  earliest  fact  that  we  have  on  record  which  had 
any  influence  on  Turner  is  that  his  paternal  grandfather 
and  grandmother  spent  all  their  lives  at  South  Molton  in 
Devonshire.  Although  he  is  not  known  to  have  visited 
Devonshire  till  he  was  thirty-seven  years  of  age;1  he 
appears  to  have  been  proud  of  his  connection  with  the 
county,  and  to  have  asserted  that  he  was  a  Devonshire 
man.  This  is,  as  far  as  we  know,  the  solitary  effect  of 
Turner's  ancestry  upon  him.  Of  his  father  and  mother 
the  influence  was  necessarily  great.  From  his  father  he 
undoubtedly  obtained  his  extraordinary  habits  of  economy, 
that  spirit  of  a  petty  tradesman,  which  was  one  of  his 
most  unlovely  characteristics,  and,  be  it  added,  his  honesty 
and  industry  also.  Of  his  father  we  have  several  descrip- 
tions by  persons  who  knew  him ;  of  his  mother,  one  only, 
and  that,  unfortunately,  not  so  authentic.  We  will  give 
the  lady  the  first  place,  and  it  must  be  remembered  that 
this  unfavourable  picture  is  drawn  by  Mr.  Thornbury  from 
information  derived  from  the  Rev.  Henry  Syer  Trimmer, 
the  son  of  Turner's  old  friend  and  executor,  the  Rev. 
Henry  Scott  Trimmer,  of  Heston,  who  obtained  it  from 
Hannah  Danby,  Turner's  housekeeper  in  Queen  Anne 
Street,  who  got  it  from  Turner's  father. 

"  In  an  unfinished  portrait  of  her  by  her  son,  which  was  one  of  his 
first  attempts,  my  informant  perceived  no  mark  of  promise  ;  and  he  ex- 


1  Mr.  Cyrus  Redding  met  him  there  in  1812,  and  Sir  Charles  East- 
lake  then  or  after  then.  There  is  no  engraved  drawing  by  him  from 
Devonshire  till  the  Southern  Coast,  which  began  in  1814,  or  picture,  till 
the  Crossing  of  the  Brook,  exhibited  in  1815. 


8  TURNER. 

tended  the  same  remark  to  Turner's  first  essays  at  landscape.  The 
portrait  was  not  wanting  in  force  or  decision  of  touch,  but  the  drawing 
was  defective.  There  was  a  strong  likeness  to  Turner  about  the  nose 
and  eyes  ;  her  eyes  being  represented  as  blue,  of  a  lighter  hue  than  her 
son's ;  her  nose  aquiline,  and  the  nether  lip  having  a  slight  fall.  Her 
hair  was  well  frizzed — for  which  she  might  have  been  indebted  to  her 
husband's  professional  skill — and  it  was  surmounted  by  a  cap  with  large 
flappers.  Her  posture  therein  (sic)  was  erect,  and  her  aspect  masculine, 
not  to  say  fierce ;  and  this  impression  of  her  character  was  confirmed  by 
report,  which  proclaimed  her  to  have  been  a  person  of  ungovernable 
temper,  and  to  have  led  her  husband  a  sad  life.  Like  her  son,  her 
stature  was  below  the  average." 

This  as  the  result  of  a  painted  portrait  by  her  son,  and 
verbal  description  by  her  husband,  is  not  too  flattering,  and 
it  is  all  we  know  of  the  character  and  appearance  of  poor 
Mary  Turner.  Of  her  belongings  we  know  still  less.  She 
is  said  to  have  been  sister  to  Mr.  Marshall,  a  butcher,  of 
Brentford,  and  first  cousin  to  the  grandmother  of  Dr. 
Shaw,  author  of  "  Gallops  in  the  Antipodes,"  and  to  have 
been  related  to  the  Marshalls,  formerly  of  Shelford  Manor 
House,  near  Nottingham.1  We  are  able  to  add  to  this 
scanty  information  that  she  was  the  younger  sister  of 
Mrs.  Harpnr,  the  wife  of  the  curate  of  Islington,  who  was 
grandfather  of  Mr.  Henry  Harpur,  one  of  Turner's  exe- 
cutors. He  (the  grandfather)  fell  in  love  with  his  future 
wife  when  at  Oxford,  and  their  marriage  brought  her 

1  Mr.  Thornbury  treats  this  as  an  absurd  tradition,  but  it  is  supported 
by  an  account  given  by  Dr.  Shaw  of  an  interview  between  him  and  the 
artist,  and  printed  by  Mr.  T.  pp.  318,  319.  "  May  I  ask  you  if  you  are 
the  Mr.  Turner  who  visited  at  Shelford  Manor,  in  the  county  of  Not- 
tingham, in  your  youth  ? "  "I  am,"  he  answered.  On  being  further 
questioned  as  to  whether  his  mother's  name  was  Marshall,  he  grew  very 
angry,  and  accused  his  visitor  of  taking  "  an  unwarrantable  liberty," 
but  was  pacified  by  an  apology,  and  invited  Dr.  Shaw  to  give  him  "  the 
favour  of  a  visit "  whenever  he  came  to  town. 


EARLY  DAYS.  V 

sister  to  London.  We  are  also  informed  that  the  hard- 
featured  woman  crooning  over  the  smoke,  in  an  early 
drawing  by  Turner  in  the  National  Gallery  (An  Interior, 
No.  15),  is  Turner's  mother,  and  the  kitchen  in  which  she 
is  sitting,  the  kitchen  in  Maiden  Lane.  We  have  also 
ascertained  that  one  Mary  Turner,  from  St.  Paul's,  Covent 
Garden,  was  admitted  into  Bethlehem  Hospital  on  Dec.  27th, 
1800,  one  of  whose  sponsors  for  removal  was  "  Richard 
Twenlow,  Peruke  Maker."  This  unfortunate  lady,  whether 
Turner's  mother  or  not,  was  discharged  uncured  in  the 
following  year.  Altogether  what  we  know  about  Turner's 
mother  does  not  inspire  curiosity,  and  we  fear  that  she 
was  never  destined  to  figure  in  an  edition  of  "  The  Mothers 
of  Great  Men."  The  "  sad  life"  which  she  is  said  to  have 
led  her  husband  could  scarcely  have  been  sadder  than 
her  own. 

Of  his  father  we  have  fuller  information. 

"  Mr.  Trimmer's  description  of  the  painter's  parent,  the  result  of  close 
knowledge  of  him,  is  that  he  was  about  the  height  of  his  son,  spare  and 
muscular,  with  a  head  below  the  average  standards  "  (whatever  that  may 
mean)  "  small  blue  eyes,  parrot  nose,  projecting  chin,  and  a  fresh  com- 
plexion indicative  of  health,  which  he  apparently  enjoyed  to  the  full. 
He  was  a  chatty  old  fellow,  and  talked  fast,  and  his  words  acquired  a 
peculiar  transatlantic  twang  from  his  nasal  enunciation.  His  cheerful- 
ness was  greater  than  that  of  his  son,  and  a  smile  was  always  on  his 
countenance." 

This  description  is  of  him  when  an  old  man,  but  he  must 
have  been  not  very  different  from  this  when  about  one 
year  and  eighteen  months  after  his  marriage,  which  took 
place  on  August  29th,  1773,  the  little  William  was  born. 
He  was  not  a  man  likely  to  alter  much  in  habit  or  ap- 
pearance. He  was  always  stingy,  if  we  may  judge  by  the 


10  TURNER. 

story  of  his  following  a  customer  down  Maiden  Lane  to 
recover  a  halfpenny  which  he  omitted  to  charge  for  soap, 
and  from  his  son's  statement  that  his  "  Dad"  never  praised 
him  for  anything  but  saving  a  halfpenny.  As  barbers  are 
proverbially  talkative,  and  as  persons  do  not  generally 
develop  cheerfulness  in  later  life,  we  may  consider  Mr. 
Trimmer's  portrait  of  the  old  man  to  be  essentially  correct 
of  him  when  young,  especially  as  we  find  that  Turner  the 
younger  was  always  "  old  looking,"  a  peculiarity  which  is 
generally  hereditary. 

The  house  (now  pulled  down)  in  which  Turner  was  born, 
and  in  which,  for  at  least  some  time  after,  father,  mother, 
and  son  resided  together,  is  thus  described  by  Mr.  Ruskin  : 
"  Near  the  south-west  corner  of  Covent  Garden,  a  square 
brick  pit  or  well  is  formed  by  a  close-set  block  of  houses, 
to  the  back  windows  of  which  it  admits  a  few  rays  of 
light.  Access  to  the  bottom  of  it  is  obtained  out  of  Maiden 
Lane,  through  a  low  archway  and  an  iron  gate ;  and  if  you 
stand  long  enough  under  the  archway  to  accustom  your 
eyes  to  the  darkness,  you  may  see,  on  the  left  hand,  a 
narrow  door,  which  formerly  gave  access  to  a  respectable 
barber's  shop,  of  which  the  front  window,  looking  into 
Maiden  Lane,  is  still  extant."  Maiden  Lane  is  not  a  very 
brilliant  thoroughfare,  and  was  still  narrower  and  darker 
at  this  time,  but  still  this  picture,  though  doubtless  accu- 
rate, seems  to  make  it  still  darker,  and  in  the  engraving  of 
the  house  in  Thornbury's  life  of  Turner,  even  the  front 
window  that  looked  into  Maiden  Lane  is  rendered  ominously 
black  by  the  shadow  of  a  watchman  thrown  up  by  his  low- 
held  lantern.  To  us  it  seems  that  there  is  plenty  of  dark 
in  Turner's  life  without  thus  unduly  heightening  the  gloom 
of  his  first  dwelling-place.  A  barber  cannot  do  his  work 
without  light,  and  we  have  no  doubt  that  whatever  sorrow 


EARLY   DATS. 


11 


fell  upon  Tur- 
ner in  his  life 
was  in  no  way 
deepenedbyhis 
having  to  pass 
through  a  low 
arch  way  and  an 
iron  gate  in 
order  to  get 
to  his  father's 
shop. 

The  house 
in  Maiden  Lane 
would  have 
been  a  cheer- 
ful enough  and 
a  wholesome 
enough  nest 
for  little  Wil- 
liam '  if  it  had 
contained  a 
happy  family 
presided  over 
by  a  sweetly 
smiling  mo- 
ther. This  want 
is  the  real  dark 
porch  and  iron 
gateway  of  his 
life,  the  want 
which  could  never  be  supplied.  In  that  wonderful  memory 


HOUSE    IN    -MAIDEN    LANE   IN    WHICH    TURNER 
WAS   BORN. 


1  He  was  called  "  William  "  at  home. 


12  TURNER. 

of  his,  so  faithful,  by  all  accounts,  to  all  places  where  he  had 
once  been  happy,  there  was  no  chamber  stored  with  sweet 
pictures  of  the  home  of  his  youth ;  no  exhaustless  reservoir 
of  tender,  healthy  sentiment,  such  as  most  of  us  have,  how- 
ever poor.  Here  is  a  note  of  pathos  on  which  we  might  dwell 
long  and  strongly  without  fear  of  dispute  or  charge  of  false 
sentiment.  Children,  indeed,  do  not  miss  what  they  have 
not :  present  sorrows  did  not  probably  affect  his  appetite, 
future  forebodings  did  not  dim  his  hopes ;  but  then,  and  for 
ever  afterwards,  he  was  terribly  handicapped  in  the  struggle 
for  peace  and  happiness  on  earth,  in  his  desire  after  right 
thinking  and  right  doing,  in  his  aims  at  self-development, 
in  his  chance  of  wholesome  fellowship  with  his  kind,  in  his 
capacity  for  understanding  others  and  making  himself 
understood,  for  all  these  things  are  more  difficult  of  attain- 
ment to  one  who  never  has  known  by  personal  experience 
the  charm  of  what  we  mean  by  "  home." 

This  want  in  his  life  runs  through  his  art,  full  as  it  is 
of  feeling  for  his  fellow-creatures,  their  daily  labour,  their 
merry-makings,  their  fateful  lives  and  deaths  ;  there  is  at 
least  one  note  missing  in  his  gamut  of  human  circumstance 
— that  of  domesticity.  He  shows  us  men  at  work  in  the 
fields,  on  the  seas,  in  the  mines,  in  the  battle,  bargaining 
in  the  market,  and  carousing  at  the  fair,  but  never  at  home. 
This  is  one  of  the  principal  reasons  why  his  art  has  never 
been  truly  popular  in  home-loving  domestic  England. 

It  is  not  good  for  man,  still  less  for  a  boy,  to  be  alone,  and 
we  do  not  think  we  can  be  wrong  in  thinking  that  he  was 
a  solitary  boy.  How  soon  he  became  so  we  do  not  know. 
We  may  hope  that  in  his  earliest  years  at  least  he  was 
tenderly  cared  for  by  his  mother,  and  petted  by  his  father. 
There  is  no  reason  why  we  may  not  draw  a  bright  picture 


EARLY   DATS.  13 

of  his  childhood,  and  fancy  him  walking  on  Sundays  with 
his  father  and  mother  in  the  Mall  of  St.  James's  Park, 
wearing  a  short  flat-crowned  hat  with  a  broad  brim  over 
his  curly  brown  hair,  with  snowy  ruffles  round  his  neck 
and  wrists,  and  a  gay  sash  tied  round  his  waist,  concealing 
the  junction  between  his  jacket-waistcoat  and  his  panta- 
loons ;  but  this  bright  period  cannot  have  lasted  long.  Soon 
he  must  have  been  driven  upon  himself  for  his  amusement, 
and  fortunate  it  was  for  him  that  nature  provided  him  with 
one  wholesome  and  endless. 

It  is  known  that  one  artist,  Stothard,  was  a  customer 
of  his  father,  and  it  is  probable  that  as  there  was  an 
academy  in  St.  Martin's  Lane,  and  the  Society  of  Artists 
at  the  Lyceum,  and  many  artists  resided  about  Covent 
Garden,  the  little  boy's  emulation  may  have  been  excited 
by  hearing  of  them,  and  perhaps  chatting  with  them  and 
seeing  their  sketches. 

He  certainly  began  very  early.  We  are  told  that  he 
first  showed  his  talent  by  drawing  with  his  finger  in  milk 
spilt  on  the  teatray,  and  the  story  of  his  sketching  a  coat- 
of-arms  from  a  set  of  castors  at  Mr.  Tomkison's  the 
jeweller,  and  father  of  the  celebrated  pianoforte  maker, 
must  belong  to  a  very  early  age.1  The  earliest  known  draw- 
ing by  him  of  a  building  is  one  of  Margate  Church,  when  he 
was  nine  years  old,  shortly  before  he  went  to  his  uncle's  at 
New  Brentford  for  change  of  air.  There  he  went  to  his 
first  school  and  drew  cocks  and  hens  on  the  walls,  and 
birds,  flowers,  and  trees  from  the*  school-room  windows, 
and  it  is  added  that  "  his  schoolfellows,  sympathizing  with 


1  See  "  Notes  and  Queries,"  2nd  series,  T.  475,  for  the  true  version  of 
this  story. 


14  TURNER. 

his  taste,  often  did  his  sums  for  him,  while  he  pursued  the 
bent  of  his  compelling  genius."  Very  soon  after  this,  if  not 
before,  he  began  to  make  drawings,  some  of  these  copies  of 
engravings  coloured,  which  were  exhibited  in  his  father's 
shop  window  at  the  price  of  a  few  shillings,  and  he  drew  por- 
traits of  his  father  and  mother,  and  of  himself  at  an  early 
age.  It  is  said  that  his  father  intended  him  to  be  a  barber 
at  first,1  but  struck  with  his  talent  for  drawing  soon  deter- 
mined that  he  should  follow  his  bent  and  be  a  painter.  He 
is  said  to  have  delighted  in  going  into  the  fields  and  down 
the  river  to  sketch,  but  all  the  very  early  drawings  we  have 
seen,  including  those  purchased  at  his  father's  shop,  are  draw- 
ings of  buildings,  mostly  in  London.  Of  these  there  is  one  of 
the  interior  of  Westminster  Abbey,  in  Mr.  Crowle's  edition  of 
"  Pennant's  London,"  now  in  the  print  room  of  the  British 
Museum.  There  is  nothing  to  distinguish  these  from  the 
work  of  any  clever  boy,  but  this  drawing  and  one  in  the 
National  Gallery,  of  a  scene  near  Oxford,  both  probably 
copied  from  prints,  show  a  sense  not  only  of  light  but  colour. 
We  have  also  seen  a  copy  of  Boswell's  "  Antiquities  of 
England  and  Wales,"  with  about  seventy  of  the  plates  very 
cleverly  coloured  by  him  when  a  boy  at  Brentford. 

Whatever  defects  Turner,  the  barber,  may  have  had  as  a 
father,  neglect  of  his  son's  talents  was  not  one  of  them,  and, 
though  very  careful  for  the  pence,  he  showed  that  he  could 
make  a  pecuniary  sacrifice  when  he  had  a  chance  of  further- 
ing his  son's  prospects,  for  he  refused  to  allow  him  to  become 
the  apprentice  of  one  architect  who  offered  to  take  him  for 
nothing,  and  paid  the  whole  of  a  legacy  he  had  been  left  to 
place  him  with  another,  and  we  may  presume  a  better  one. 

1  Wornum. 


EARLY  DATS.  15 

The  information  given  by  Mr.  Thornbury  about  his  early 
training,  scholastic  and  professional,  is  very  meagre,  in- 
consecutive, and  puzzling.  According  to  him  it  was  in 
1785  that  Turner,  having  been  previously  taught  reading, 
but  not  writing,  by  his  father,  went  to  his  first  school, 
which  was  kept  by  Mr.  John  White,  at  New  Brentford ; 
in  1786  or  1787,  by  which  time  at  least  his  destination  for 
an  artist's  career  appears  to  have  been  settled,  he  was  sent 
to  "Mr.  Palice,  a  floral  drawing-master,"  at  an  Academy  in 
Soho,  and  in  1788,  to  a  school  kept  by  a  Mr.  Coleman  at 
Margate  ;  at  some  time  before  1789,  to  Mr.  Thomas  Malton, 
a  perspective  draughtsman,  who  kept  a  school  in  Long  Acre, 
and  in  this  year  to  Mr.  Hard  wick,  the  architect,  and  to  the 
school  of  the  Eoyal  Academy.  He  also  went  to  Paul  Sandby 's 
drawing  school  in  St.  Martin's  Lane.  During  all,  or  nearly 
all  this  time,  he  was,  according  to  Mr.  Thornbury,  employed: 
1.  In  making  drawings  at  home  to  sell.  2.  In  colouring 
prints  for  John  Raphael  Smith,  the  engraver,  printseller, 
and  miniature  painter.  3.  Out  sketching  with  Girtin. 
4.  Making  drawings  of  an  evening  at  Dr.  Monro's  l  in  the 
Adelphi.  5.  Washing  in  backgrounds  for  Mr.  Porden. 
If  he  was  really  employed  in  this  way  from  1785  to  1789, 
and  could  only  read  and  not  write  when  he  began  this 
extraordinary  course  of  training,  it  is  no  wonder  that  he 
remained  illiterate  all  his  life,  or  that  his  mind  was  utterly 
incapacitated  for  taking  in  and  assimilating  knowledge  in 
the  usual  way.  Spending  a  few  months  at  a  day  school, 
and  a  few  more  at  a  "floral  drawing  master,"  then  a  few 

1  Dr.  Thomas  Monro,  of  Bushey  and  Adelphi  Terrace,  physician  of 
Bridewell  and  Bethlehem  Hospitals,  a  well-known  lover  of  art  and 
patron  of  Edridge,  Girtin,  Turner,  W.  Hunt,  and  other  young  artists. 
He  erected  monuments  at  Bushey  Church  to  Edridge  and  Hearne. 


16  TURNER. 

more  at  school  at  Margate,  making  drawings  for  sale,  colour- 
ing prints,  fruitlessly  studying  perspective,  bandied  about 
from  school  master  to  drawing  master,  and  from  drawing 
master  to  architect — such  a  life  for  a  young  mind  from 
ten  to  fourteen  years  of  age  is  enough  to  spoil  the  finest 
intellectual  digestion. 

One  fact,  however,  comes  clear  out  of  all  this  confusion, 
that  of  regular  and  ordinary  schooling  he  had  little  or 
none,  and  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  it  was  be- 
cause of  the  peculiar  quality  of  his  mind  that  he  always 
spoke  and  wrote  like  a  dunce.  He  never  had  a  fair  chance 
of  acquiring  in  his  youth  more  than  a  traveller's  knowledge 
of  his  own  language,  and  so  his  mind  had  a  very  small  out- 
let through  the  ordinary  channels  of  speech.  On  the  other 
hand,  faculties  of  drawing  and  composition  were  trained  to 
the  utmost,  and  this  compensated  him  in  a  measure.  His 
mind  had  only  one  entrance,  his  eye,  and  only  one  exit,  his 
hand;  but  they  were  both  exceptional,  and  cultivated 
exceptionally. 

There  was,  however,  much  of  pleasure  in  this  life  for  a 
boy  like  Turner,  for  though  he  evidently  worked  hard,  he 
liked  work  and  the  work  he  had  to  do  was  especially  con- 
genial to  him.  He  met  friends  and  encouragers  on  all 
sides ;  from  his  father  to  his  school- fellows.  However  much 
reason  he  may  have  had  for  disappointment  in  later  years, 
there  was  none  in  his  early  life.  He  was  "  found  out "  in 
his  childhood.  Encouraged  by  his  father,  with  his  drawings 
finding  a  ready  sale  to  such  men  as  Mr.  Henderson,  Mr. 
Crowle,  and  Mr.  Tomkison,  with  plenty  of  employment  in 
no  slavish  mean  work  for  such  a  youngster,  such  as  colour- 
ing prints  and  putting  in  backgrounds  to  drawings,  with 
Mr.  Porden  generously  offering  to  take  him  as  an  appren- 


a   -S 


o    ? 

65 


18  TURNER. 

tice  for  nothing,  with  a  kind  friend  like  Dr.  Monro  always 
willing  to  give  him  a  supper  and  half-a-crown  for  sketches 
of  the  country  near  his  residence  at  Bushey,  or  the 
result  of  an  evening's  copying  of  the  then  best  attainable 
water  colours  ;  his  life  was  far  more  agreeable,  far 
more  tended  to  make  him  think  well  of  the  world  and  of 
the  people  in  it  than  has  been  usually  represented,  and 
probably  as  good  as  he  could  have  had  for  attaining  early 
proficiency  in  his  art.  London  at  that  time  was  not  a  bad 
place  for  a  landscape  artist.  It  was  neither  so  clouded  nor 
so  sooty  as  it  is  now ;  there  were  healthier  trees  in  it,  and 
more  of  them,  a  more  picturesque  and  a  purer  river,  and 
within  less  than  half  an  hour's  walk  from  Maiden  Lane  there 
were  green  fields,  for  north  of  the  British  Museum  the 
country  was  still  open. 

But  he  was  not  entirely  dependent  upon  his  art  and  his 
employers  for  enjoyment,  or  for  forming  his  opinion  of  the 
human  race.  There  were  houses  at  which  he  visited  and 
where  he  was  received  warmly.  When  at  school  at  Mar- 
gate he  got  an  "  introduction  to  the  pleasant  family  of  a 
favourite  school-fellow ; "  at  Bristol  there  was  Mr.  Narraway , ' 
a  fellmonger  in  Broadmead,  and  an  old  friend  of  his  father, 
at  whose  house  he  drew  two  of  the  children  and  his  own  por- 
trait; and  at  the  house  of  Mr.  William  Frederick  Wells, 
the  artist,  he  was  evidently  one  of  the  family,  as  is  proved 
by  the  charmingly  tender  reminiscences  of  Mrs.  Wheeler. 

"  In  early  life  my  father's  house  was  his  second  home,  a  haven  of  rest 
from  many  domestic  trials  too  sacred  to  touch  upon.  Turner  loved  my 
father  with  a  son's  affection ;  and  to  me  he  was  as  an  elder  brother. 
Many  are  the  times  I  have  gone  out  sketching  with  him.  I  remember 

1  This  gentleman  is  described  by  Mr.  Thornbury  as  Mr.  #arraway,  a 
fishmonger  in  Broadway. 


EARLY   DATS.  19 

his  scrambling  up  a  tree  to  obtain  a  better  view,  and  then  he  made  a 
coloured  sketch,  I  handing  up  his  colours  as  he  wanted  them.  Of  course, 
at  that  time,  I  was  quite  a  young  girl.  He  was  a  firm  affectionate  friend 
to  the  end  of  his  life  ;  his  feelings  were  seldom  seen  on  the  surface,  but 
they  were  deep  and  enduring.  No  one  would  have  imagined,  under  that 
rather  rough  and  cold  exterior,  how  very  strong  were  the  affections 
which  lay  hidden  beneath.  I  have  more  than  once  seen  him  weep  bit- 
terly, particularly  at  the  death  of  my  own  dear  father,1  which  took 
him  by  surprise,  for  he  was  blind  to  the  coming  event,  which  he 
dreaded.  He  came  immediately  to  my  house  in  an  agony  of  tears. 
Sobbing  like  a  child,  he  said, '  Oh,  Clara,  Clara !  these  are  iron  tears. 
I  have  lost  the  best  friend  I  ever  had  in  my  life.'  Oh !  what  a  different 
man  would  Turner  have  been  if  all  the  good  and  kindly  feelings  of  his 
great  mind  had  been  called  into  action ;  but  they  lay  dormant,  and  were 
known  to  so  very  few.  He  was  by  nature  suspicious,  and  no  tender  hand 
had  wiped  away  early  prejudices,  the  inevitable  consequence  of  a  defective 
education.  Of  all  the  light-hearted  merry  creatures  I  ever  knew,  Turner 
was  the  most  so  ;  and  the  laughter  and  fun  that  abounded  when  he  was 
an  inmate  of  our  cottage  was  inconceivable,  particularly  with  the 
juvenile  members  of  the  family." — THORNBUBY'S  Life  of  Turner  (1877), 
pp.  235,  236. 

A  man  who  knew  this  lady  for  sixty  years,  and  about 
whom  so  kind  a  heart  could  have  thus  written,  could  not 
have  been  driven  to  a  life  of  morbid  seclusion  because  the 
world  had  treated  him  so  badly  in  his  youth.  His  home 
may  have  been,  and  probably  was  a  cheerless  one,  and  we 
may  well  pity  him  on  that  account.  The  rest  of  our  pity 
we  had  better  reserve  for  his  want  of  education,  and  the 
secretive,  suspicious  disposition  which  nature  gave  him, 
and  which  he  allowed  to  master  his  more  genial  propen- 
sities. 

1  This  took  place  in  1836. 


CHAPTER  III. 

YOUTH. 

1789  to  1796. 

THE  only  rebuff  with  which  the  young  artist  appears 
to  have  met  was  from  Tom  Malton,  the  perspective 
draughtsman,  who  sent  him  back  to  his  father  as  a  boy  to 
whom  it  was  impossible  to  teach  geometrical  perspective. 
As  Mr.  Hamerton  observes,  "  There  is  nothing  in  this 
which  need  surprise  us  in  the  least.  Scientific  perspec- 
tive is  a  pursuit  which  may  amuse  or  occupy  a  mathema- 
tician, but  the  stronger  the  artistic  faculty  in  a  painter  the 
less  he  is  likely  to  take  to  it,  for  it  exercises  other  faculties 
than  his.  Besides  this,  he  feels  instinctively  that  he  can 
do  very  well  without  it."  No  doubt  he  did  feel  this,  and 
the  feeling  very  much  lessened  the  disappointment  at  being 
"  sent  back,"  and  he  did  very  well  without  it,  so  well  that 
he  was  appointed  Professor  of  Perspective  to  the  Royal 
Academy  without  it,  and  not  unfrequently  exhibited 
pictures  on  its  walls,  which  showed  how  very  much  "  with- 
out it "  he  was. 

Otherwise  he  met  with  no  rebuffs  in  his  art.  We  have 
seen  that  he  got  plenty  of  employment,  and  have  expressed 
an  opinion  that  that  employment — colouring  engravings, 
and  putting  in  backgrounds  and  foregrounds  and  skies  for 
architectural  drawings — was  no  mean  employment  for  a 


YOUTH.  21 

youngster.  He  himself,  when  pitied  in  later  years  for  this 
supposed  degradation  and  slavery,  replied,  "  Well,  and 
what  could  be  better  practice  !  "  and  it  was  this  and  more. 
It  not  only  taught  him  to  work  neatly,  to  lay  flat  washes 
smoothly  and  accurately,  but  it  taught  him  to  exercise  his 
ingenuity  and  artistic  taste.  He  probably  succeeded  so 
well,  because  it  gave  him  an  opportunity  of  displaying  his 
artistic  faculty.  Every  sketch  that  he  had  thus  to  beautify 
presented  an  artistic  problem,  how  best  to  light  and  deco- 
rate and  make  a  picture  of  the  bare  bones  of  an  architec- 
tural design.  It  gave  him  a  sense  of  power  and  importance 
thus  to  be  the  converter  of  topography  into  art ;  it  taught 
him  the  value  of  light  and  shade,  and  the  decorative  capa- 
cities of  trees  and  sky.  His  success  gave  him  self-reliance. 
It  also,  and  this  was  perhaps  a  more  doubtful  advantage, 
taught  him  to  consider  drawing  as  a  skill  in  beautifying. 
He  got  the  habit  of  treating  buildings  as  objects  less  valu- 
able as  objects  of  art  in  themselves,  than  for  the  breaking  of 
sunbeams,  and  as  straight  lines  to  contrast  with  the  end- 
less curves  of  nature ;  and  also  the  habit  of  using  trees  as 
he  wanted  them,  of  bending  their  boughs  and  moulding 
their  contours  in  harmony  with  the  poem-picture  of  his 
imagination.  To  this  early  treatment  of  architectural 
drawings  may  be  traced  his  great  power  of  composition, 
and  also  much  of  his  mannerism. 

That  he  soon  knew  his  power,  and  had  his  secrets  of 
manipulation,  may  be  one  reason  for  his  early  secretiveness 
about  his  art;  for  though  there  is  little  in  these  early 
works  of  his  to  prefigure  his  coming  greatness,  he,  when  a 
youth,  attained  a  proficiency  equal  to  that  of  the  best  water- 
colour  artists  of  his  day,  and,  with  his  friend  Girtin,  soon 
surpassed  all  except  Cozens ;  and  he  could  not  have  done  this 


22  TURNER. 

without  a  sense  of  superiority  and  many  private  experiments ; 
or,  on  the  other  hand,  he  may,  like  many  men,  have  required 
complete  solitude  to  work  at  all,  though  this  was  not  the 
case  in  later  life,  as  he  often  painted  almost  the  whole  of 
his  pictures  on  the  Academy  walls.  At  all  events,  the 
degree  of  his  secretiveness  is  extraordinary.  "  I  knew 
him,"  says  an  old  architect,  "  when  a  boy,  and  have  often 
paid  him  a  guinea  for  putting  backgrounds  to  my  archi- 
tectural drawings,  calling  upon  him  for  this  purpose  at 
his  father's  shop  in  Maiden  Lane,  Covent  Garden.  He 
never  would  suffer  me  to  see  him  draw,  but  concealed,  as 
I  understood,  all  that  he  did  in  his  bedroom."  When  in 
this  bedroom  one  morning,  the  door  suddenly  opened, 
and  Mr.  Britton  entered.1  In  an  instant  Turner 
covered  up  his  drawings  and  ran  to  bar  the  crafty  in- 
truder's progress,  "  I've  come  to  see  the  drawings  for  the 
Earl." 2  "  You  shan't  see  'em,"  was  the  reply.  "  Is  that 
the  answer  I  am  to  take  back  to  his  lordship  ?  "  "  Yes  ; 
and  mind  that  next  time  you  come  through  the  shop, 
and  not  up  the  back  way."  When  Mr.  Newby  Lowson  ac- 
companied him  on  a  tour  on  the  continent  he  "  did  not  show 
his  companion  a  single  sketch."  Similiar  stories  could  be 
added  to  show  how  this  habit  continued  through  his  life. 

The  dates  of  these  two  early  stories  are  not  given  by  Mr. 
Thornbury,  nor  the  name  of  the  "  old  architect,"  but  they 
show  that  he  was  early  employed  by  a  nobleman,  and  that  he 
got  a  guinea  a  piece  for  his  backgrounds,  not  only  "  good 
practice,"  but  good  pay  for  a  youth ;  he  was,  in  fact,  better 


1  Mr.  John  Britton,  publisher,  and  author  of  "  Beauties  of  Wilt- 
shire," &c.,  &c. 
a  Perhaps  the  Earl  of  Essex. 


YOUTH.  23 

employed  and  better  paid  than  any  young  artist  whose  history 
we  can  remember.  Nor  does  it  seem  to  have  been  the  fault 
of  Providence  if  he  did  not  enjoy  the  crowning  happiness  of 
life,  a  friend  of  suitable  tastes,  for  Girtin  was  sent  to  him, 
a  youth  of  his  own  age  endowed  with  similar  gifts,  and  of 
a  most  sociable  disposition;  nor  did  he  want  a  capable 
mentor,  for  he  had  Dr.  Monro,  "  his  true  master,"  as 
Mr.  Ruskin  calls  him. 

It  was  at  Raphael  Smith's  that  he  formed  an  intimacy 
with  Girtin,  says  Mr.  Alaric  Watts.1  "  His  son,  Mr.  Calvert 
Girtin,  described  his  father  and  young  Turner  as  associated 
in  a  friendly  rivalry,  under  the  hospitable  roof  and  super- 
intendence of  that  lover  of  art,  Dr.  Monro  (then  residing 
in  the  Adelphi).  Nor  was  Turner  forgetful  of  the  Doctor's 
kindness,  for  on  referring  to  that  period  of  his  career,  in  a 
conversation  with  Mr.  David  Roberts,  he  said,  '  There,' 
pointing  to  Harrow,  '  Girtin  and  I  have  often  walked  to 
Bushey  and  back,  to  make  drawings  for  good  Dr.  Monro, 
at  half-a-crown  apiece  and  a  supper.'  " 

If  a  saying  quoted  by  T.  Miller  in  his  "Memoirs  of 
Turner  and  Girtin  "  may  be  trusted,2  Turner  may  have  met 
Gainsborough  and  other  eminent  painters  of  the  day  at 
Dr.  Monro's.  Speaking  of  Dr.  Monro's  conversaziones, 
"  Old  Pine,  of  '  Wine  and  Walnuts  '  celebrity,  used  to  say, 
'  What  a  glorious  coterie  there  was,  when  Wilson,  Marlow, 
Gainsborough,  Paul,  and  Tom  Sandby,  Rooker,  Hearne, 
and  Cozins  (sic)  used  to  meet,  and  you,  old  Jack,'  turning 
to  Varley,  '  were  a  boy  in  a  pinafore,  with  Turner,  Girtin, 
and  Edridge  as  bigwigs,  on  whom  you  used  to  look  as 


1  See  Memoir  prefixed  to  "  Liber  Fluviorum." 

8  "  Turner  and  Girtin's  Picturesque  Views,"  London,  1854. 


24  TURNER. 

something  beyond  the  usual  amount  of  clay.' "  As  Gains- 
borough died  in  1788,  when  Turner  was  thirteen  years  old, 
and  Turner  was  only  two  years  the  senior  of  John  Varley, 
this  shows  how  early  he  began  to  have  a  reputation. 

The  acquaintance  between  Turner  and  Girtin  is  one  of 
the  most  interesting  facts  in  Turner's  Life.  Being  more 
than  two  years  Turner's  senior  (Girtin  was  born  on  Febru- 
ary 18th,  1773)  and  having  at  least  equal  talent  as  a  boy,  it 
is  probable  that  he  was  "  ahead  "  of  Turner  at  first,  and  that 
Turner  learnt  much  from  him.  We  may  therefore  accept 
as  true  his  reputed  sayings,  "  Had  Tom  Girtin  lived,  I 
should  have  starved  ;  "  x  and  (of  one  of  Girtin's  "  yellow  " 
drawings),  "  I  never  in  my  whole  life  could  make  a  draw- 
ing like  that,  I  would  at  any  time  have  given  one  of  my 
little  fingers  to  have  made  such  a  one."  '  With  regard  to 
their  mutual  studies  and  their  respective  talents  we  have 
information  in  the  studies  and  drawings  themselves,  but 
with  regard  to  their  human  relationship  we  have  very  little. 
Turner  always  spoke  of  him  as  "  Poor  Tom,"  and  proposed 
to,  and  possibly  did,  put  up  a  tablet  to  his  memory ;  but 
there  are  no  letters  or  anecdotes  to  show  that  what  we  all 
mean  by  "  friendship  "  ever  existed  between  them. 

We  are  equally  ignorant  as  to  the  amount  of  intimacy 
between  him  and  Dr.  Monro,  for  though  the  latter  did  not 
die  till  1833,  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  they  ever  met 
after  Turner's  student  days  were  over. 

It  may,  however,  be  fairly  assumed  that  we  should  have 
known  more  about  his  intimacy  with  his  Achates  and  his 
Maecenas  if  it  had  been  great  and  continuous.  The  absence 


1  See  also  Mr.  Wedmore's  interesting  essay  on  Girtin  for  a  story  about 
Turner  and  Girtin's  drawing  of  the  White  House  at  Chelsea. 


YOUTH.  25 

of  documents  or  rumours  on  the  subject  are  all  in  favour 
of  his  having  kept  himself  to  himself,  of  his  absorption  in 
his  art  from  an  early  date,  neglecting  the  social  advantages 
that  were  open  to  him,  neglecting  intellectual  intercourse 
with  his  artistic  peers,  neglecting  everything  except 
the  pursuit  of  his  art,  and  the  road  to  wealth  and  fame. 
This  self-absorption,  this  concentration  of  all  his  time  and 
power  to  this  one  but  triple  object,  the  trinity  of  his 
desire,  may  have  arisen  from  a  natural  cause,  the  strength 
of  impelling  genius  over  which  he  had  no  control ;  it  may 
have  arisen  from  secretiveness,  suspicion,  selfishness,  and 
ambition,  which  he  could  have  controlled  but  would  not ; 
but  whatever  its  cause,  there  is  no  doubt  that  it  existed, 
and  that  with  every  external  facility  for  becoming  a  social 
and  cultivated  being,  he  took  the  solitary  path  which  led 
him  to  greatness  (not  perhaps  greater  than  he  might  have 
otherwise  attained),  but  a  greatness  accompanied  with 
mental  isolation  and  ignorance  of  all  but  what  he  could 
gather  from  unaided  observation,  and  an  uncultivated 
intellect. 

The  education  of  Turner  may  be  summed  up  as  follows  : 
he  learnt  reading  from  his  father,  writing  and  probably 
little  else  at  his  schools  at  Brentford  and  Margate,  per- 
spective (imperfectly)  from  T.  Malton,  architecture  (im- 
perfectly and  classical  only)  from  Mr.  Hardwick,  water- 
colour  drawing  from  Dr.  Monro,  and  perhaps  some  hints 
as  to  painting  in  oils  from  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  in  whose 
house  he  studied  for  a  while.  The  rest  of  his  power  he 
cultivated  himself,  being  much  helped  by  the  early  com- 
panionship of  Girtin.  Nearly  all,  if  not  all,  this  education 
except  that  mentioned  in  the  last  paragraph  was  over  in 
1789,  when  Sir  Joshua  laid  down  his  brush,  conscious  of 


26  TURNER. 

failing  sight,  and  young  Turner  became  a  student  of  the 
Royal  Academy. 

These  were  his  principal  living  instructors,  but  he  learnt 
more  from  the  dead — from  Claude  and  Vandevelde,  from 
Titian  and  Canaletto,  from  Cuyp  and  Wilson.  He  learnt  most 
of  all  from  nature,  but  in  the  beginning  of  his  career  his 
studies  from  art  are  more  apparent  in  his  works.  There  is 
scarcely  one  of  his  predecessors  or  contemporaries  of  any 
character  in  water-colour  painting  that  he  did  not  copy, 
whose  style  and  method  he  did  not  study,  and  in  part 
adopt.  We  have  within  the  last  few  years  only  been  able 
to  study  at  ease  the  works  of  the  early  water-colour  painters 
of  England,  and  the  result  of  the  interesting  collections 
now  at  South  Kensington  and  the  British  Museum,  be- 
quests of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Ellison,  Mr.  Towshend,  Mr. William 
Smith,  and  Mr.  Henderson,  has  been  on  the  one  hand  to 
increase  our  opinion  of  their  merit,  and  on  the  other  to 
show  how  far  Turner  outstripped  them.  We  can  now  see 
how  true  and  delicate  were  the  lightly- washed  monochrome 
water  scenes  of  Hearne  ;  how  robust  the  studies  of  Sandby ; 
that  Daniell  and  Dayes  could  not  only  draw  architecture 
well,  but  could  warm  their  buildings  with  sun,  and  surround 
them  with  space  and  air ;  that  Cozens  could  conceive  a 
landscape-poem,  and  execute  it  in  delicate  harmonies  of 
green  and  silver;  that  Girtin  could  invest  the  simplest 
study  with  the  feeling  of  the  pathos  of  ruin  and  solemnity 
of  evening ;  the  first  of  water-colour  painters  to  feel  and 
paint  the  soft  penetrative  influence  of  sunlight,  subduing 
all  things  with  its  golden  charm.  In  looking  at  one  of  his 
drawings  now  at  South  Kensington,  a  View  of  the  Wharf e, 
and  comparing  it  with  the  works  around,  one  cannot  help 
being  struck  with  this  difference,  that  it  is  complete  as  far 


NANTES. 
From  "  Rivers  of  France. 


YOUTH.  27 

as  it  goes,  the  realization  of  one  thought,  the  perfect  ren- 
dering of  an  impression,  harmonious  to  a  touch.  Broad 
and  almost  rough  as  it  is,  it  is  yet  finished  in  the  true 
sense  as  no  English  work  of  the  kind  ever  was  before.  There 
are  more  elaborate  drawings  around,  plenty  of  struggle  after 
effects  of  brighter  colour,  much  cleverness,  much  skill,  but 
nowhere  a  picture  so  completely  at  peace  with  itself.  In 
looking  at  it  we  can  realize  what  Turner  meant  when  he 
said  that  he  could  never  make  drawings  like  Girtin.  Equal 
harmony  of  tone,  far  greater  and  more  splendid  harmonies 
of  colour,  miracles  of  delicate  drawing,  triumphs  over  the 
most  difficult  effects,  dreams  of  ineffable  loveliness,  very 
many  things  unattempted  by  Girtin  he  could  achieve,  but 
never  this  simple  sweet  gravity,  never  this  perfection  of 
spiritual  peace. 

But  in  spite  of  this,  the  great  fact  in  comparing  Turner 
with  the  other  water-colour  painters  of  his  own  time — and 
we  are  speaking  now  of  his  early  works — is  this,  that 
whereas  each  of  the  best  of  the  others  is  remarkable  for 
one  or  two  special  beauties  of  style  or  effect,  he  is  remarkable 
for  all.  He  could  reach  near,  if  not  quite,  to  the  golden 
simplicity  of  Girtin,  to  the  silver  sweetness  of  Cozens  ;  he 
could  draw  trees  with  the  delicate  dexterity  of  Edridge, 
and  equal  the  beautiful  distances  of  Glover  ;  he  could  use 
the  poor  body-colours  of  the  day,  or  the  simple  wash  of 
sepia,  with  equal  cleverness.  He  was  not  only  technically 
the  equal,  if  not  master  of  them  all,  but  he  comprehended 
them,  almost  without  exception. 

Such  mastery  was  not  attained  without  extraordinary 
diligence  in  the  study  of  pictures.  At  Dr.  Monro's  he 
could  study  all  the  best  modern  men,  including  Gains- 
borough, Morland,  Wilson,  and  De  Loutherbourg,  and  he 


28  TURNER. 

could  also  study  Salvator  Rosa,  Rembrandt,  Claude,  and 
Vandevelde.  One  day  looking  over  some  prints  with, 
Mr.  Trimmer,1  he  took  up  a  Vandevelde  and  said,  "  That 
made  me  a  painter."  And  Dayes  (Grirtin's  master)  wrote 
in  1804  : — "  The  way  he  acquired  his  professional  powers 
was  by  borrowing  where  he  could  a  drawing  or  a  picture 
to  copy  from,  or  by  making  a  sketch  of  any  one  in  the  Exhi- 
bition2 early  in  the,  morning,  and  finishing  it  at  home."  The 
character  of  his  early  works  is  sufficient  of  itself  to  prove 
the  extent  of  his  study  of  pictures,  and  we  are  inclined 
to  think  that  most  of  his  ea,rly  practice  was  from  works  of 
art,  and  not  from  nature.  The  spirit  of  rivalry  commenced 
in  him  very  early  ;  it  was  the  only  test  of  his  powers,  and 
lie  seems  to  have  pitted  himself  in  the  beginning  of  his 
career  against  all  his  contemporaries,  from  Mr.  Henderson 
to  Girtin,  and  many  of  the  old  masters,  and  never  to  have 
entirely  relinquished  the  habit.  When  we  think  of  the 
number  of  years  he  spent  in  doing  little  but  topographical 
drawings,  a  castle  here,  a  town  there,  an  abbey  there,  with 
appropriate  figures  in  the  foreground,  using  only  sober 
browns  and  blues  for  colours,  his  progress  seems  to  have 
been  very  slow ;  but  when  we  see  most  of  the  artists  of 
his  time  doing  exactly  the  same,  and  that  the  old  landscape 
painters  whom  he  principally  studied  were  almost  as 
limited  in  the  colours  they  employed,  especially  in  their 
drawings,  we  do  not  see  how  he  could  well  have  progressed 
more  quickly ;  and  when  we  further  consider  the  enormous 
distance  which  he  travelled — from  the  very  bottom  to  the 


1  Whether  father  or  son  does  not  appear. 

*  Down  to  1851  the  Exhibition,  in  common  parlance,  always  meant 
the  Exhibition  of  the  lioyal  Academy. 


YOUTH.  29 

very  height  of  his  art — that  he  should  have  accomplished  it 
all  in  one  short  life  appears  miraculous.  The  milestones  of  his 
journey  are  not  shown  plainly  in  his  early  work,  that  is  all. 
That  there  was  much  conscious  restraint  on  his  part  in 
the  use  of  colours,  that  he  of  wise  purpose  devoted  himself 
to  perfection  of  his  technical  power  before  he  endeavoured 
to  show  his  strength  to  the  world,  we  see  no  reason  to 
believe.  He  could  not  well  have  done  otherwise,  and  for 
such  an  original  mind  one  marvels  to  observe  how  through- 
out his  career  he  was  led  in  the  chains  of  circumstance. 
The  poet-painter,  the  dumb-poet,  as  he  has  well  been  called, 
shows  little  eccentricity  of  genius  in  his  youth.  There 
was  the  strong  inclination  to  draw,  but  no  strong  inclina- 
tion to  draw  anything  in  particular,  or  anything  very 
beautiful.  On  the  contrary,  he  drew  the  most  uninteresting 
and  prosaic  of  things,  copied  bad  topographical  prints  and 
ugly  buildings.  When  it  was  proposed  to  make  him  an 
architect  he  did  not  rebel ;  when  it  was  afterwards  pro- 
posed to  make  him  a  portrait-painter  he  did  not  murmur. 
It  was  Mr.  Hardwick,  not  himself,  that  insisted  on  his 
going  to  the  Royal  Academy.  His  first  essay  in  oils  was 
due  to  another's  instigation.  Whatever  work  came  to  him, 
he  did ;  that  which  he  could  do  best,  that  which  he  had  special 
genius  for,  the  painting  of  pure  landscape,  he  scarcely 
attempted  at  all  for  years.  Almost  every  artist  of  that 
day  went  about  England  drawing  abbeys,  seats,  and  castles 
for  topographical  works.  What  others  did,  he  did.  What 
others  did  not  do,  he  did  not  do.  No  doubt  it  was  the  only 
profitable  employment  he  could  get,  and  he  very  properly 
took  it,  and  worked  hard  at  it ;  he  was  borne  along  the 
stream  of  circumstance  as  everybody  else  is,  but  he,  unlike 
most  men  of  strong  genius,  seems  never  to  have  attempted 


30  TURNER. 

to  stem  its  tide,  or  get  out  of  its  way.  His  genius  was 
a  growth  to  which  every  event  and  accident  of  his  life 
added  its  contribution  of  nourishment.  Though  stirred 
with  unusual  power,  he  was  probably  almost  as  unconscious 
as  to  what  it  tended  as  a  seed  in  the  ground ;  he  had  a  dim 
perception  of  a  light  towards  which  he  was  growing ;  he 
was  conscious  that  he  put  forth  leaves,  and  that  he  should 
some  day  flower,  but  when,  and  with  what  special  bloom 
he  was  destined  to  surprise  the  world,  we  doubt  if  he  had 
any  prophetic  glimpse.  His  development  was  extraordi- 
nary, and  could  only  have  been  produced  by  special  careful 
training,  but  this  training  was  mainly  due  to  circumstances 
over  which  he  had  no  control.  Nature  came  to  his  assis- 
tance in  a  thousand  different  ways,  and  in  nothing  more 
than  giving  him  a  quiet  temperament,  like  that  of  Cole- 
ridge's child,  "  that  always  finds,  and  never  seeks."  He 
was  not  fastidious,  except  with  regard  to  his  own  work, 
and  about  that,  more  as  to  the  arrangement  and  finish  of 
it  than  the  subject.  He  had  an  excellent  constitution,  early 
inured  to  rough  it,  and  his  comforts  were  very  simple  and 
easily  obtained.  He  was  not  particular,  even  about  his 
materials  and  tools  ;  any  scrap  of  paper  would  do  for  a 
sketch  on  an  emergency.  He  was  always  able  to  work, 
and  to  work  swiftly  and  well.  No  fidgeting  about  for 
hours  and  days  because  he  was  not  in  the  mood  ;  no  sacri- 
fice of  sketch  after  sketch  because  they  did  not  please  him ; 
none  of  that  nervous  restlessness  which  so  often  attends 
imaginative  workers  ;  and  his  work  was  imaginative  from 
the  first — if  not  in  conception,  in  execution.  Solitude 
seems  to  have  been  the  only  necessary  condition  for  the  free 
exercise  of  his  powers,  which  were  as  happily  employed  in 
"  making  a  picture"  of  one  thing  as  of  another,  and  when  he 


YOUTH.  31 

wanted  something  to  put  in  it  to  get  it  "  right,"  he  never 
had  much  trouble  in  finding  it.  He  said,  "  If  when  out 
sketching  you  felt  a  loss,  you  have  only  to  turn  round,  or 
walk  a  few  paces  further,  and  you  had  what  you  wanted 
before  you."  His  physical  powers  were  also  great,  and 
his  mind  was  active  in  receiving  impressions.  Mr.  Lovell 
Reeve,  as  quoted  by  Mr.  Alaric  Watts,  says  : — "  His 
religious  study  of  nature  was  such  that  he  would  walk 
through  portions  of  England,  twenty  to  twenty-five  miles 
a  day,  with  his  little  modicum  of  baggage  at  the  end  of  a 
stick,  sketching  rapidly  on  his  way  all  striking  pieces  of 
composition,  and  marking  effects  with  a  power  that 
daguerreotyped  theiu  in  his  mind.  There  were  few  moving 
phenomena  in  clouds  and  shadows  that  he  did  not  fix 
indelibly  in  his  memory,  though  he  might  not  call  them 
into  requisition  for  years  afterwards."  He  was  not  tied  to 
any  particular  method,  or  bound  to  any  particular  habit ; 
when  he  found  that  his  way  of  sketching  was  too  minute 
and  slow  to  enable  him  to  make  his  drawings  pay  their 
expenses,  he  changed  his  style  to  a  broader,  swifter  one. 
So,  without  going  quite  to  the  length  of  Mr.  Hamerton, 
who  appears  to  think  that  everything  in  Turner's  youth  (in- 
cluding ugliness  and  bandy  legs)  happened  for  the  best  in  the 
best  of  possible  worlds,  we  may  safely  affirm  that  he  could 
scarcely  have  been  gifted  with  a  temperament  better  suited 
for  steady  progress,  or  one  which  was  more  calculated  to 
make  him  happy,  for  it  enabled  him  to  exercise  his  body 
and  mind  at  the  same  time,  to  earn  his  living  and  to  lay 
up  stores  of  pictorial  beauty  in  his  memory,  to  do  what- 
ever task  was  set  him,  and  yet  get  artistic  pleasure  out  of 
even  the  most  commonplace  study  by  embellishing  it  with 
his  imagination. 


32  TURNER. 

In  1789  he  became  a  student  of  the  Eoyal  Academy, 
and  in  the  year  after  he  exhibited  a  View  of  the  Arch- 
bisJwp's  Palace  at  Lambeth.  In  1791,  2,  and  3  he  exhibited 
several  topographical  drawings,  but  down  to  this  time  he 
seems  to  have  made  no  sketching  tours  of  any  length.  He 
drew  in  the  neighbourhood  of  London,  and  his  journeys  to  stay 
with  friends  at  Margate  and  Bristol  will  account  for  his 
drawings  of  Malmesbury,  Canterbury,  and  Bristol.  But 
about  1792  he  received  a  commission  from  Mr.  J.  Walker, 
the  engraver  (who  also  afterwards  employed  Girtin),  to 
make  drawings  for  his  "  Copper-plate  Magazine. "  This  was 
the  beginning  of  the  long  series  of  engravings  from  his 
works,  and  it  may  have  been  one  of  the  reasons  which 
decided  him  to  set  up  a  studio  for  himself,  which  he 
did  in  Hand  Court,  Maiden  Lane,  close  to  his  father, 
where  he  remained  till  he  was  elected  an  Associate  of  the 
Royal  Academy  in  1800,  when  he  removed  to  64,  Harley 
Street.  A  year  or  so  after  his  employment  by  Walker  he 
got  similar  commissions  from  Mr.  Harrison  for  his  "  Pocket 
Magazine."  These  commissions  sent  him  on  his  travels 
over  England  referred  to  by  Mr.  Lovell  Keeve.  The 
copper-plates  of  the  sketches  for  Walker,  including  some 
after  Girtin,  were  found  about  sixty  years  afterwards  by 
Mr.  T.  Miller,  who  republished  them  in  1854,  in  a  volume 
called  "  Turner  and  Girtin's  Picturesque  Views,  sixty 
years  since."  These  drawings  mark  his  first  tour  to  Wales, 
on  which  he  set  forth  on  a  pony  lent  by  Mr.  Narraway. 
The  first  public  results  of  this  tour  were  the  drawing  of 
Ch&pstow  in  "Walker's  Magazine"  for  November,  1794,  and 
three  drawings  in  the*  Royal  Academy  for  that  year. 
By  the  next  year's  engravings  and  pictures  we  trace  him 
to  "Nottingham,"  "  Bridgnorth,"  "  Matlock,"  "  Binning- 


YOUTH.  33 

ham,"  "  Cambridge,"  "  Lincoln,"  "  Wrexham,"  "  Peterbo- 
rough," and  "Shrewsbury,"  and  by  those  of  1796  and  1797 
to"  Chester,"  "Neath,"  "  Tunbridge,"  "  Bath,"  "  Staines," 
" Wallingford,"  "Windsor,"  "Ely,"  "Flint,"  "Hampton 
Court,  Herefordshire,"  "  Salisbury,"  "  Wolverhampton," 
"Llandilo,"  "The  Isle  of  Wight,"  "Llandaff,"  "  Wal- 
tham,"  and  "  Ewenny  (Glamorgan),"  not  including  draw- 
ings of  places  he  had  been  to  before. 

His  furthest  point  north  was  Lincoln,  his  farthest  west 
(in  England)  Bristol.  The  only  parts  in  which  he  reached 
the  coast  were  in  Wales  and  the  Isle  of  Wight.  Lanca- 
shire and  the  Lakes,  Yorkshire  and  its  waterfalls,  were 
yet  to  come,  and  nearly  all  coast  scenery,  except  that  of 
Kent. 

The  drawings  for  the  Magazines  were  not  remarkable 
for  any  poetry  or  originality  of  treatment  perceptible  in 
the  engravings,  the  cathedrals  being  generally  taken  from 
an  unpicturesque  point  of  view,  more  with  the  object  of 
showing  their  length  and  size  than  their  beauty,  to  which 
he  appears  to  have  been  somewhat  insensible  always  ;  they 
show  a  great  love  of  bridges  and  anglers — there  is  scarcely 
one  without  a  bridge,  and  some  have  two;  a  desire  to  tell 
as  much  about  the  place  as  possible  by  the  introduction  of 
figures  ;  they  show  his  habit  of  taking  his  scenes  from  a 
distance,  generally  from  very  high  ground,  and  his  delight 
in  putting  as  much  in  a  small  space  as  possible,  and  his 
power  of  drawing  masses  of  houses,  as  in  the  Birmingham, 
and  the  Chester. 

The  result  of  these  tours  may  be  said  to  have  been  the 
perfection  of  his  technical  skill,  the  partial  displacement 
of  traditional  notions  of  composition,  and  the  storing  of  his 
memory  with  infinite  effects  of  nature.  It  was  as  good 

D 


34  TURNER. 

and  thorough  discipline  in  the  study  of  nature,  as  his 
former  life  had  been  in  the  study  of  art,  and  though  his 
visit  to  Yorkshire  in  the  next  year  (1797)  seemed  neces- 
sary to  bring  thoroughly  to  the  surface  all  the  knowledge 
and  power  he  had  acquired,  it  was  not  without  present 
fruit.  Rather  of  necessity  than  choice,  we  may  observe, 
he  confined  his  powers  mainly  to  the  drawing  of  views 
of  places  supposed  to  be  of  interest  to  the  subscribers  of 
the  Magazines,  but  his  individual  inclinations  in  the  choice 
of  subject,  and  his  tendency  to  purer  landscape  and  sea- 
view,  showed  themselves  now  and  then.  First  in  his  draw- 
ing of  The  Pantheon,  the  Morning  after  the  Fire,  exhibited 
in  1792 ;  next  in  1793,  in  his  View  on  the  River  Avon,  near 
St.  Vincent's  Rocks,  Bristol,  and  the  Rising  Squall,  Hot 
Wells,1  from  the  same  place  ;  then  in  1794,  Second  Fall  of 
the  River  Monach,  Devil's  Bridge;  in  1795,  View  near  the 
Devil's  Bridge,  Cardiganshire,  with  the  River  Ryddol;  in 
1796,  Fishermen  at  Sea;  and  in  1797,  Fishermen  coming 
AsJwre  at  Sunset,  previous  to  a  Gale,  and  Moonlight:  a  study 
in  Milbank,2  now  in  the  National  Gallery. 

That  his  genius  was  perceptible  even  in  these  early 
days  is  evident  from  the  notice  taken  in  a  contemporary 
review  of  his  drawings  in  1794,  when  he  was  nineteen. 

"388.  Christchurch  Gate,  Canterbury.  W.  Turner.  This  deserving 
picture,  with  Nos.  333  and  336,  are  amongst  the  best  in  the  present  ex- 
hibition. They  are  the  productions  of  a  very  young  artist,  and  give 
strong  indications  of  first-rate  ability ;  the  character  of  Gothic  archi- 
tecture is  most  happily  preserved,  and  its  profusion  of  minute  parts 
massed  with  judgment  and  tinctured  with  truth  and  fidelity.  This  young 

1  His  first  exhibited  oil  picture,  according  to  Mr.  S.  Redgrave.     See 
"  Dictionary  of  Artists  of  the  English  School." 
•  According  to  most  accounts  his  first  exhibited  oil  picture. 


YOUTH.  35 

artist  should  beware  of  contemporary  imitations.  His  present  effort 
evinces  an  eye  for  nature,  which  should  scorn  to  look  to  any  other 
source." 

Again  in  1796,  the  "Companion  to  the  Exhibition," 
with  regard  to  his  first  sea-piece  contains  this  paradoxical 
sentence,  attempting  to  express  his  peculiar  power  of  giving 
a  distinct  impression  of  ill-defined  objects,  which  was  ap- 
parently evident  even  in  this  early  work. 

"  Colouring  natural,  figures  masterly,  not  too  distinct — obscure  per- 
ception of  the  objects  distinctly  seen — through  the  obscurity  of  the  night 
— partially  illumined." 

Again  in  1797,  we  have  this  testimony  as  to  the  extra- 
ordinary (for  that  time)  character  of  his  work,  from  an 
entry  in  the  diary  of  Thomas  Greene,  of  Ipswich,  about 
the  Fishermen  of  1797. 

"  June  2,  1797.  Visited  the  Royal  Academy  Exhibition.  Particularly 
struck  with  a  sea-view,  by  Turner ;  fishing  vessels  coming  in,  with  a 
heavy  swell,  in  apprehension  of  tempest  gathering  in  the  distance,  and 
casting,  as  it  advances,  a  night  of  shade,  while  a  parting  glow  is  spread 
with  fine  effect  upon  the  shore.  The  whole  composition  bold  in  design 
and  masterly  in  execution.  I  am  entirely  unacquainted  with  the  artist ; 
but  if  he  proceeds,  as  he  has  begun,  he  cannot  fail  to  become  the  first  in 
his  department." 

Here,  then,  before  Turner's  visit  to  Yorkshire,  we  have 
evidence  that  not  only  was  the  superiority  of  his  work 
apparent,  but  that  one  or  two-  of  the  special  qualities 
which  were  to  mark  it  in  the  future  were  already  per- 
ceived, and  publicly  praised. 

After  looking  carefully  at  all  the  ascertainable  facts  of 
Turner's  youth,  we  can  only  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
it  was  not  the  fault  of  nature  or  mankind  that  he  grew  into 
a  solitary  and  disappointed  man.. 


36  TURNER. 

Secretiveness  on  his  own  part  and  want  of  trust  in  his 
fellow-creatures  seem  to  have  been  bred  in  him,  and  to  have 
resisted  all  the  many  proofs  which  the  friends  of  his  youth, 
and  we  may  say  of  his  life,  afforded,  that  there  were  kind 
and  unselfish  persons  in  the  world  whom  he  could  trust, 
and  who  would  trust  him.  There  is  no  proof  that  he  ever 
had  confidential  relations  with  any  human  being,  not  even 
Girtin.  That  he  should  have  willingly  cut  himself  adrift 
from  human  fellowship  we  are  loath  to  believe,  in  spite  of  the 
many  facts  which  seem  to  support  it.  It  seems  more  natural, 
and  on  the  whole  (sad  as  even  this  is)  more  pleasant,  to  be- 
lieve that  he  met  with  a  severe  blow  to  his  confidence ;  that, 
though  naturally  suspicious,  the  many  kindnesses  he  re- 
ceived were  not  without  a  gracious  effect,  but  that  his 
budding  trust  was  killed  by  a  sudden  unexpected  frost. 
For  these  reasons  we  are  inclined  to  believe  in  the  story  of 
his  early  love ;  although  it,  as  told  by  Mr.  Thornbury,  is  not 
without  inconsistencies. 

Turner  is  said  to  have  plighted  vows  with  the  sister  of 
his  school  friend  at  Margate ;  he  left  on  a  tour,  giving  her 
his  portrait,  the  letters  between  them  were  intercepted, 
and  after  waiting  two  years  she  accepted  another.  When 
he  reappeared  she  was  on  the  eve  of  her  marriage,  and 
thinking  her  honour  involved,  refused  to  return  to  her  old 
love. 

Such  in  short  is  the  story  which  we  wish  to  believe,  and 
as  it  came  to  Mr.  Thornbury  from  one  who  heard  it  from 
relatives  of  the  lady,  to  whom  she  told  it,  there  is  probably 
some  truth  in  it.  It  is,  however,  almost  impossible  to 
believe  that  Turner,  whose  tours  never  extended  to  two 
years,  and  whose  power  of  locomotion  was  extraordinary, 
should  allow  that  time  to  elapse  without  going  to  see  one 


YOUTH.  37 

whom  he  really  loved.  If  he  did  not  get  any  letters  he  would 
have  been  desperate  ;  if  he  did  get  letters  they  would  have 
shown  him  that  she  had  not  received  his,  which  would 
have  made  him,  if  possible,  more  desperate  still.  As  the 
name  of  the  lady  is  not  given,  it  is  next  to  impossible  to 
find  out  the  truth.  Our  faith,  however,  as  a  balance  of 
probability,  still  remains  that  Turner  was  jilted,  and  that  the 
effect  of  it  was  to  confirm  for  ever  his  want  of  confidence 
in  his  fellow-creatures. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

YORKSHIRE  AND  THE  YOUNG  ACADEMICIAN. 
1797  TO  1807. 

FROM  the  facts  of  the  foregoing  chapter  it  may  be  fairly 
presumed  that  although  Turner's  election  as  Associate 
in  1799  followed  quickly  after  his  fine  display  of  pictures 
from  the  northern  counties  in  1798,  he  was  before  this  a 
marked  man,  whose  superiority  over  all  then  living  land- 
scape painters  was  visible  to  critics  and  lovers  of  art,  and 
could  not  have  been  disguised  from  the  eyes  of  the  artists  of 
the  Royal  Academy.  It  did  not  require  a  genius  like  that  of 
Turner  to  distance  competitors  on  the  Academy  walls  in 
those  days.  England  was  almost  at  its  lowest  point  both  in 
literature  and  art.  The  great  men  of  the  earlier  part  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  Pope,  Thomson,  Gray,  Collins,  Swift, 
Fielding,  Sterne  and  Richardson,  had  long  been  dead,  and  of 
the  later  brilliant,  but  small  circle  of  artists  and  men  of 
letters  of  which  Dr.  Johnson  was  the  centre  (Goldsmith 
and  Burke,  Garrick  and  Reynolds,  Hume  and  Gibbon),  Rey- 
nolds only  was  left,  and  he  was  moribund.  Of  other  artists 
with  any  title  to  fame  there  was  none  left  but  De  Louther- 
bourg  and  Morland ;  Hogarth  had  died  in  1764,  Wilson 
in  1782,  Gainsborough  in  1788.  The  new  generation  of 


YORKSHIRE  AND  THE   YOUNG  ACADEMICIAN.         39 

men  of  genius  were  born ;  some  were  growing  tip,  some 
in  their  cradles.  A  few  had  already  shown  signs.  Words- 
worth and  Coleridge  had  just  put  forth  their  "Lyrical 
Ballads  "  at  Bristol,  Burns  was  famous  in  Scotland,  Charles 
Lamb  had  written  "  Rosamund  Gray,"  but  Scott  the 
"  Great  Unknown,"  was  as  yet  "  unknown  "  only,  though 
five  years  older  than  Turner  ;  Byron  had  not  gone  to 
Harrow,  and  the  united  ages  of  Keats  and  Shelley  did  not 
amount  to  ten  years;  the  only  living  poets  of  deserved 
repute  were  Cowper  and  Crabbe.  Delia  Crusca  in  poetry, 
and  West  in  art,  were  the  bright  particular  stars  of  this 
gloomy  period.  The  landscape  painters  who  were  Acade- 
micians were  such  men  as  Sir  William  Beechey,  Sir  Francis 
Bourgeois,  Garvey,  Farington,  and  Paul  Sandby,  and 
among  the  Associates,  Turner  had  no  more  important  rival 
than  Philip  Reinagle.  Girtin  and  De  Loutherbourg 
alone  of  all  the  then  exhibitors  were  anything  like  a  match 
for  him,  and  Girtin  spoilt  (till  1801)  any  chance  he  might 
otherwise  have  had  of  Academic  honours  by  not  exhibiting 
pictures  in  oil ;  he  died  in  1802,  leaving  Turner  undisputed 
master  of  the  field.  It  is  not  greatly  therefore  to  be 
wondered  at  that  Turner  was  elected  Associate  in  1799,  and 
a  full  Academician  in  1802.  It  was,  however,  much  to  the 
credit  of  the  Academy  that  they  recognized  his  talent  so  soon 
and  welcomed  him  as  an  honour  to  their  body,  instead  of 
keeping  him  out  from  jealous  motives.  Turner  never  forgot 
what  he  owed  to  the  Academy,  and  whether  it  taught  him 
nothing,  as  Mr.  Ruskin  says,  or  a  great  deal,  as  Mr.  Hamer- 
ton  thinks,  does  not  much  matter — it  taught  him  all  it  knew, 
and  gave  him  ungrudgingly  every  honour  in  its  gift.  But 
its  claims  on  his  gratitude  did  not  stop  here,  for  it  was 
his  school  in  more  than  one  branch  of  learning ;  from 


40  TURNER. 

its  catalogues  he  derived  the  subjects  of  most  of  his  pictures, 
they  directed  him  to  the  poems  which  set  flame  to  his 
imagination,  and  helped  (unfortunately),  with  their  queer 
spelling  and  grammar  and  truncated  quotations,  to  form 
what  literary  style  he  had ;  but  the  greatest  boon  which 
the  Academy  afforded  was  the  opportunity  of  fame,  a  field 
for  that  ambition  which  was  one  of  the  ruling  powers  of 
his  nature. 

But  his  tour  in  the  North  in  1797  was  before  his  days 
of  Academic  rivalries  and  glories.  He  was  only  two-and- 
twenty,  and  seems  to  have  been  actuated  by  no  motive  but 
to  paint  as  well  and  truly  as  he  could  the  beautiful  scenery 
through  which  he  passed.  The  effect  upon  him  of  the 
fells  and  vales  of  Yorkshire  and  Cumberland  seems  to  have 
been  much  the  same  as  that  of  Scotland  upon  Landseer ;  it 
braced  all  his  powers,  developed  manhood  of  art,  turned 
him  from  a  toilsome  student  into  a  triumphant  master. 
Mr.  Ruskin  writes  more  eloquently  than  truly  about  this 
first  visit.  "For  the  first  time  the  silence  of  nature  around 
him,  her  freedom  sealed  to  him,  her  glory  opened  to  him. 
Peace  at  last,  and  freedom  at  last,  and  loveliness  at  last ; 
it  is  here  then,  among  the  deserted  vales — not  among  men ; 
those  pale,  poverty-struck,  or  cruel  faces — that  multi- 
tudinous marred  humanity — are  not  the  only  things  which 
God  has  made."  These  are  fine  words,  but  what  a  picture, 
if  true!  Can  this  young  man  who  has  travelled  through 
all  these  many  counties  in  England  and  Wales,  which  we 
have  already  enumerated,  never  have  known  the  "  silence 
of  nature,"  or  "freedom,"  or  "peace,"  or  "loveliness?"  Can 
his  experience  of  mankind,  of  Dr.  Monro,  of  Girtin,  of  Mr. 
Hardwick,  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  of  Mr.  Henderson,  have 
left  upon  him  such  an  impression  of  the  failure  of  God's 


YORKSHIRE  AND  THE  YOUNG  ACADEMICIAN.    41 

handiwork  in  making  men,  that  a  mountain  seems  to  him 
in  comparison  as  a  revelation  of  unexpected  success  ?  If 
Turner  had  been  cooped  in  a  garret  of  the  foulest  alley  in 
London  since  his  birth,  and  had  only  escaped  now  and  then 
from  the  hardest  drudgery  to  read  the  works  of  Mr.  Carlyle, 
this  picture  might  be  near  the  truth,  but  we  doubt  even 
then  if  it  could  escape  the  charge  of  being  over-coloured. 

Whether  Turner  had  any  special  object  in  this  journey 
to  the  North  in  1797  is  not  clear,  but  it  is  at  least  probable 
that  Girtin's  success  at  the  Exhibition  of  this  year  with  his 
drawings  from  Yorkshire  and  Scotland  may  have  influenced 
him,  and  that  he  may  have  already  received  a  commission 
from  Dr.  Whitaker  to  make  drawings  for  the  "  Parish  of 
Whalley,"  published  three  years  afterwards.  He  must  at 
all  events  have  had  much  leisure  from  other  employment  in 
order  to  produce  the  important  pictures  in  oil  and  water- 
colour  which  he  exhibited  the  next  year.  Of  these  we  only 
know  Morning  on  the  Coniston  Fdls  and  Buttermere  Lake, 
now  in  the  National  Gallery.  Another,  whether  water  or 
oils  we  do  not  know,  was  Norham  Castle  on  the  Tweed — 
Summer's  Morn,  the  first  of  several  pictures  of  the  same 
subject,  which  was  a  favourite  of  his  for  a  good  reason. 
Many  years  after  (probably  about  1824  or  1825),  when 
making  sketches  for  "  Provincial  Antiquities  and  Pictu- 
resque Scenery  of  Scotland,  with  descriptive  illustrations  by 
Sir  Walter  Scott,  1826,"  he  took  off  his  hat  to  Norham 
Castle,  and  Cadell  the  publisher,  who  was  with  him,  ex- 
pressed surprise.  "  Oh,"  was  the  reply,  "  I  made  a  drawing 
or  pain  ting  of  Norham  several  years  since.  It  took ;  and  from 
that  day  to  this  I  have  had  as  much  to  do  as  my  hands 
could  execute."  If  the  Castle  was  treated  in  the  same 
way  in  this  first  as  in  the  subsequent  pictures  of  Norham, 


YORKSHIRE  AND  THE  YOUNG  ACADEMICIAN.    43 

with  the  hill  and  ruin  in  the  middle  distance  set  against  a 
brightly  illumined  sky,  the  effect  was  sufficiently  new  and 
striking  to  make  the  reputation  of  any  painter  in  those 
days.  It  was  an  effect  which  as  far  as  we  know  had  never 
been  attempted  before,  this  casting  of  the  whole  shadow  of 
hill  and  castle  straight  at  the  spectator,  so  that,  in  spite  of 
the  bright  reflections  in  the  watery  foreground,  he  seems 
to  be  within  it,  and  to  see  through  the  soft  shadowy  air,  the 
solemn  bulk  of  mound  and  ruin,  with  their  outlines  blurred 
with  light,  grand  and  indistinct  against  the  burning  sky. 

The  pictures  of  1797-99  confirmed  beyond  any  doubt  that 
a  great  artist  had  arisen,  who  was  not  only  a  painter  but  a 
poet — a  poet,  not  so  much  of  the  pathos  of  ruin,  though  so 
many  of  his  pictures  had  ruins  in  them,  nor  of  the  chequered 
fate  of  mankind,  though  there  is  something  of  the  "  Falla- 
cies of  Hope  "  indicated  in  the  quotations  to  his  pictures 
— as  of  the  mystery  and  beauty  of  light,  of  the  power 
of  nature,  her  inexhaustible  variety  and  energy,  her  in- 
finite complexity  and  fulness.  No  one  can  look  upon 
his  splendid  drawing  of  Warkworth  Castle,  exhibited  in 
1799,  and  now  at  South  Kensington,  with  its  rich  glow  of 
sunset  and  transparent  shadow,  and  its  wonderful  masses 
of  clouds,  without  feeling  that  such  work  as  this  was  a 
revelation  in  those  days.  Sparing  and  not  very  pleasant  in 
colour,  it  is  yet  in  this  respect  a  great  advance  upon  the 
former  work  of  others  and  of  his  own ;  such  colour  as  there 
is  penetrates  the  shade  and  is  complete  in  harmony  and 
tone,  while  the  sky  has  no  blank  space  and  is  part  of  the 
picture,  the  vivifying  uniting  power  of  the  composition,  with 
more  interest  and  feeling  in  one  roll  of  its  truly-studied 
masses  of  cloud-form  than  could  be  found  in  the  whole  of 
any  sky  of  his  contemporaries. 


44  TURNER. 

Altogether  it  is  difficult  to  over-estimate  the  influence  of 
this  first  journey  to  the  North  upon  Turner's  mind  and  art, 
although  he  had  almost  perfected  his  skill  and  shown  un- 
mistakable signs  of  genius  before.  But  these  tours  had 
other  gifts  not  less  important,  though  in  a  different  way, 
for  his  introductions  to  Dr.  Whitaker,  the  local  historian, 
to  Mr.  Basire,  the  engraver,  to  Mr.  Fawkes  of  Farnley,  to 
Lord  Harewood,  and  to  Sir  John  Leicester  (afterwards 
(1826)  Lord  de  Tabley),  through  Mr.  Lister-Parker  of 
Browsholme  Hall,  his  guardian,  may  all  be  said  to  have 
resulted  from  this  tour. 

Dr.  Whitaker  was  the  vicar  of  the  parish  of  Whalley, 
and  was  writing  a  book  upon  it  in  the  manner  of  those 
days,  giving  descriptions  of  the  local  antiquities,  the 
churches,  the  ruins,  the  crosses,  and  an  account  of  the 
county  families,  with  their  pedigrees  and  engravings  of 
their  ancestral  seats.  Not  only  each  county,  but  almost 
every  parish  had  such  a  historian  in  those  days,  and 
although  the  spirit  of  these  works  is  archaeological  rather 
than  artistic,  engaged  with  genealogy  rather  than  history, 
and  with  pride  of  family  and  county  rather  than  of  the  people 
and  nation,  they  did  a  great  deal  of  valuable  work.  Dr. 
Whitaker's  work  is  no  exception  to  this  rule,  and  he  was 
in  many  ways  a  typical  writer  of  the  kind,  for  he  himself, 
though  he  "  chose  "  the  Church  as  his  profession,  was  a 
man  of  property  and  county  importance.  Valuable  as 
artists  were  in  those  days  to  the  writers  of  these  works, 
they  were  yet  considered  of  very  secondary  rank.  They 
•were  indeed  not  called  "  artists  "  but  "  draftsmen,"  and 
notwithstanding  that  Dr.  Whitaker  recognized  Turner's 
genius,  he  did  not  think  it  necessary  in  this  "  Parish  of 
Whalley  "  to  mention  in  the  preface  the  existence  of  such 


YORKSHIRE  AND  THE   YOUNG  ACADEMICIAN.        45 

a  person,  although  the  names  of  all  the  gentlemen  of  the 
county  who  had  furnished  him  with  drawings  or  informa- 
tion are  carefully  acknowledged  therein  ;  but  nothing  will 
show  better  the  relations  between  the  two  men  than  an 
extract  from  a  letter  from  the  reverend  bookmaker  to  one 
of  his  county  friends,  Mr.  Wilson,  of  Clitheroe,  dated  Feb. 
8th,  1800. 

"  I  have  just  had  a  ludicrous  dispute  to  settle  between  Mr.  Townley  " 
(Charles  Townley,  Esq.  of  Townley),  "myself  and  Turner,  the  drafts- 
man. Mr.  Townley  it  seems  has  found  out  an  old  and  very  bad  painting 
of  Gawthorpe  at  Mr.  Shuttleworth's  house  in  London,  as  it  stood  in  the 
last  century,  with  all  its  contemporary  accompaniments  of  clipped  yews, 
parterres,  &c. :  this  he  insisted  would  be  more  characteristic  than 
Turner's  own  sketch,  which  he  desired  him  to  lay  aside,  and  copy  the 
other.  Turner,  abhorring  the  landscape  and  contemning  the  execution 
of  it,  refused  to  comply,  and  wrote  to  me  very  tragically  on  the  subject. 
Kext  arrived  a  letter  from  Mr.  Townley,  recommending  it  to  me  to 
allow  Turner  to  take  his  own  way,  but  while  he  wrote,  his  mind  (which 
is  not  unfrequent)  veered  about,  and  he  concluded  with  desiring  me  to 
urge  Turner  to  the  performance  of  his  requisition,  as  from  myself.  I 
have,  however,  attempted  something  of  a  compromise,  which  I  fear  will 
not  succeed,  as  Turner  has  all  the  irritability  of  youthful  genius." ' 

The  "  compromise  "  was  handing  over  the  task  of  drawing 
from  the  objectionable  picture  to  Mr.  J.  Basire  the  en- 
graver. 

We  should  like  to  see  Turner's  "  tragical "  letter,  and 
also  his  rejected  drawing ;  we  should  also  like  to  have 
seen  Dr.  Whitaker's  face  if  he  had  been  told  that  not  many 
years  after  a  book  would  have  been  published  of  drawings 
by  Turner,  the  draftsman,  with  "  descriptions  by  the  Rev. 
Dr.  Whitaker." 

Of  Mr.  Fawkes,  of  whose  hall  at  Farnley  Turner  made 


1  See  Whitaker's  "  Parish  of  Whalley,"  vol.  ii.  p.  183. 


46  TURNER. 

a  drawing  for  the  "  Parish  of  Whalley,"  but  with  whom 
he  is  said  by  Thornbury  to  have  become  acquainted  about 
1802,  it  may  be  said  that  he  was  one  of  Turner's  longest 
and  staunchest  friends.     The  number  of  drawings  (still 
at  Farnley)  which  he  made  when  visiting  Mr.  Fawkes 
between  1803  and  1820  (including  as  they  do  studies  of 
birds  shot  while  he  was  there,  of  the  outhouses,  porches, 
and  gateways  on  the  property,  of  the  old  places  in  the 
vicinity,  and  of  the  rooms  in  Farnley  Hall)  attest  the  fre- 
quency of  his  visits  and  his   affection  for  the  place  and 
its    occupants,  while  the  splendid  series  of  drawings  in 
England,  Switzerland,  Italy,  and  on  the  Rhine,  and  the 
few  precious  oil  pictures  purchased  by  Mr.  Fawkes,  show 
him  to  have  been  not  only  a  true  friend,  but  a  warm  and 
sympathizing  admirer  of  his  genius.     He  indeed  was  a 
friend  such  as  few  are  permitted  to  know — one  of  a  goodly 
number  who  in  Turner's  youth  and  manhood  should  have 
made  the  world  to  him  specially  pleasant  and  sociable, 
frank  and  healthy.     If  he  could  not  or  would  not  have 
it  so,  it  was  not  from  insensibility,  for  his  feeling  was 
deep  and  his  heart  was  sound.     "  He  could  not  make  up 
his  mind  to  visit  Farnley  after  his  old  friend's  death," 
and  he  could  not  speak  of  the  shore  of  the  Wharfe  (on 
which  Farnley  Hall  looks  down)  "  but  his  voice  faltered." 
Dayes  wrote  of  him  in  1804,  "  This  man  must  be  loved 
for  his  works,  for  his  person  is  not  striking,  nor  his  con- 
versation brilliant."    At  Farnley,  as  at  Mr.  Wells'  cottage, 
Turner  was  made  at  home,  but  that  he  did  not   escape 
good-humoured  ridicule  even  at  Farnley  is  plain  from  a 
caricature  by  Mr.  Fawkes,  "  which  is  thought  by  old  friends 
to  be  very  like.     It  shows  us  a  little  Jewish-nosed  man 
in  an  ill-cut  brown  tail  coat,  striped  waistcoat,  and  enor- 


YORKSHIRE  AND  THE   YOUNG    ACADEMICIAN.        47 

mous  frilled  shirt,  with  feet  and  hands  notably  small, 
sketching  on  a  small  piece  of  paper,  held  down  almost  level 
with  his  waist." l  It  is  evident  that  at  this  time,  in  spite 
of  his  clear  little  blue  eyes,  and  his  small  hands  and  feet, 
his  appearance  was  not  one  likely  to  prepossess  women,  or 
to  inspire  consideration  among  men,  and  that  one  of  the 
ills  from  which  his  painting  room  afforded  a  refuge  may 
have  often  been  a  wounded  vanity.  There  can  be  nothing 
more  constantly  galling  to  a  sensitive  man  of  genius  than 
to  feel  that  his  appearance  does  not  inspire  the  respect  he 
feels  due  to  him.  If  he  has  eloquence  sufficient  to  com- 
mand attention,  this  will  not  matter  so  much ;  but  if  he 
has  not  even  that  (and  Turner  had  not),  his  natural  re- 
fuge is  solitude,  his  one  absorbing  occupation  is  his  art, 
his  only  worldly  ambition  is  to  show  what  is  in  him,  and 
to  compel  respect  to  his  genius  through  his  works. 

From  the  time  that  Turner  became  an  Associate  his 
struggles,  if  he  can  ever  be  said  to  have  had  any,  were  over, 
and  many  changes  took  place  in  his  life  and  art.  He  ceased 
almost  entirely  from  making  topographical  drawings  for  the 
engravers,  limiting  his  efforts  to  a  heading  to  the  "  Oxford 
Almanack,"  and  a  few  drawings  for  "  Britannia  Depicta," 
"  Mawman's  Tour,"  and  some  other  books,  until  the  com- 
mencement of  the  "  Southern  Coast  "  in  1814.  He  had  in 
effect  emancipated  himself  from  "  hackwork,"  and  could  turn 
his  attention  to  more  congenial  and  ambitious  labour.  The 
"draftsman"  had  become  the  artist,  and  he  showed  the 
improvement  in  his  position  by  moving  from  Hand  Court, 
Maiden  Lane,  to  64,  Harley  Street. 

In  future  his  exhibited  pictures  show  very  few  "  castles" 

1  See  also  Willis's  "  Current  Notes  "  for  Jan.  1852. 


48  TURNER. 

or  "  abbeys,"  unless  they  are  the  seats  of  his  distinguished 
patrons,  Mr.  Beckford  of  Fonthill  (for  whom  in  1799  he 
painted  several  views  of  that  ill-fated  tower,  which  might 
have  formed  a  subject  for  a  canto  of  Turner's  "  Fallacies 
of  Hope"),  Sir  J.  L.  Leicester,  and  others.  His  other  castles, 
Carnarvon,  1800,  Pembroke,  1801  and  1806,  St.  Donat's, 
1801,  and  Kilchurn,  1802,  were  all  probably  compositions 
in  which  local  fidelity  was  cared  for  little  in  comparison 
with  effects  of  light  and  pictorial  beauty.  How  completely  he 
disregarded  local  fact  in  the  case  of  Kilchurn  has  been  very 
completely  shown  by  Mr.  Hamerton,  and  Mr.  Ruskin  says, 
"  Observe  generally,  Turner  never,  after  this  time,  1800, 
drew  from  nature  without  composing.  His  lightest  pencil 
sketch  was  the  plan  of  a  picture,  his  completest  study  on 
the  spot  a  part  of  one." 

Of  this  period,  1800-1810,  Mr.  Ruskin  says,  "His 
manner  is  stern,  reserved,  quiet,  grave  in  colour,  forceful 
in  hand.  His  mind  tranquil ;  fixed  in  physical  study,  on 
mountain  subject;  in  moral  study,  on  the  Mythology  of 
Homer,  and  the  Law  of  the  Old  Testament."  We  wish 
he  had  given  his  reasons  for  this  last  astonishing  statement. 
For  those  who  only  know  the  working  of  Turner's  mind 
through  his  pictures,  it  is  bewildering  in  the  extreme,  for  in 
these  there  is  no  trace  that  he  ever  at  any  time  studied  the 
Law  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  the  only  classical  pictures  of 
this  period,  including  the  plates  in  the  "  Liber,"  were  Jason 
and  Narcissus  and  Echo.  If  we  include  the  pictures  of  181 1, 
we  get  one  Homeric  subject,  Chryses,  but  that  has  nothing 
to  do  with  mythology. 

The  evidence  of  Turner's  pictures  shows  little  tranquillity 
of  mind  during  this  period,  but,  on  the  contrary,  all  the  rest- 
lessness of  unsatisfied  ambition.  As  he  had  already  pitted 


YORKSHIRE  AND  THE  YOUNG   ACADEMICIAN.       49 

himself  against,  and  beaten  all  the  water-colourists,  he 
now  commenced  a  course  of  rivalry  against  all  the  oil 
painters  past  and  present,  who  came  anywhere  within  the 
reach  of  his  art,  which  he  endeavoured  to  extend  far  beyond 
landscape  limits. 

His  first  tilt  was  probably  against  De  Loutherbourg 
in  1799  with  his  Battle  of  the  Nile,  at  ten  o'clock,  wJien  the 
V  Orient  blew  up,  from  the  station  of  the  gunboats  between  the 
battery  and  Castle  of  Aboukir ;  and  his  Fifth  Plague  of  Egypt 
(1800),  his  Army  of  the  Medes  destroyed  in  the  Desert  by  a 
Whirlwind,  and  The  Tenth  plague  of  2Egypt  (1802),  pro- 
bably owed  more  to  De  Loutherbourg's  grand  but  theatri- 
cal pictures  and  Eidophusicon,  than  to  any  meditation  on 
the  "  Law  of  the  Old  Testament."  l  Of  Wilson,  though 
dead,  and  neglected  even  when  alive,  he  continued  in 
active  rivalry  as  late  as  1822,  when  he  proposed  to  Mr. 
J.  Robinson,  of  the  firm  of  Hurst  and  Robinson,  to  have 
four  of  his  pictures  (three  of  which  were  to  be  painted 
expressly  for  the  venture)  engraved  in  rivalry  with  Wilson 
and  Woollett.  "  Whether  we  can  in  the  present  day,"  he 
writes,  "  contend  with  such  powerful  antagonists  as  Wilson 
and  Woollett  would  be  at  least  tried  by  size,  security 
against  risk,  and  some  remuneration  for  the  time  of 
painting.  The  pictures  of  ultimate  sale  I  shall  be  content 
with ;  to  succeed  would  perhaps  form  another  epoch  in 

1  In  a  letter  from  Andrew  Caldwell  to  Bishop  Percy,  dated  14th  June, 
1802,  printed  by  Nicholls  in  his  "  Illustrations  of  the  Literary  History  of 
the  Eighteenth  Century,"  vol.  viii.  p.  43,  Turner  is  spoken  of  as  beating 
"  Loutherboarg  and  every  other  artist  all  to  nothing."  "A  painter  of 
my  acquaintance,  and  a  good  judge,  declares  his  pencil  is  magic;  that  it 
is  worth  every  landscape-painter's  while  to  make  a  pilgrimage  to  see 
and  study  his  works.  Loutherbuurg,  he  used  to  think  of  so  highly, 
appears  now  mediocre." 


50  TURNER. 

the  English  school ;  and  if  we  fall,  we  fall  by  contending 
with  giant  strength."  It  is  difficult  to  make  out  the  mean- 
ing of  even  this  short  extract  from  this  illiterate  composi- 
tion, but  it  is  quite  plain  that  the  open  rivalry  with  Wilson, 
which  commenced  about  1800,  had  not  ceased  in  1822. 

But  he  did  not  confine  his  rivalries  to  English  painters, 
or  to  the  field  of  landscape  art.  His  long  rivalry  with 
Claude  commenced  with  the  "Liber  Studiorum  "  in  1807, 
that  with  Vandevelde  earlier.  His  famous  Shipwreck 
(painted  1805)  now  in  the  National  Gallery,  his  per- 
haps finer  Wreck  of  the  Minotaur,  painted  for  Lord  Yar- 
borough,  and  his  Fishing  Boats  in  a  Squall,  painted  for  the 
Marquis  of  Stafford,  and  now  in  the  Ellesmere  Gallery, 
besides  a  fine  sea-piece,  painted  for  the  Earl  of  Egremont, 
are  examples  of  the  latter.  The  Ellesmere  picture  was 
painted  in  direct  rivalry  with  one  of  Vandevelde's  on  the 
same  subject,  and  both  hang  together  in  the  Ellesmere  Gal- 
lery. Of  them  John  Burnet  wrote  : — 

"  The  figures  (in  the  Vandevelde)  are  made  out  and  coloured  without 
reference  to  the  situation  they  are  in ;  the  sea  is  beautifully  painted, 
and  the  foamy  tops  of  the  waves  blown  off  by  the  wind  with  great 
observation  of  nature;  nevertheless,  the  whole  work  looks  little  and 
defined  compared  with  its  great  competitor.  Turner's  boat  is  advancing 
towards  the  spectator  with  all  sails  set,  and  a  similarity  in  both  pictures 
is  that  the  sails  are  prevented  from  being  too  cutting  and  harsh  from  their 
melting  into  and  being  softened  by  other  sails  of  a  similar  shape  and  colour. 
A  small  boat  is  brought  in  contact  in  Turner's,  stowing  away  fish,  which 
forms  the  principal  light,  if  it  may  be  so  called,  for  there  is  no  strong 
light  in  the  picture ;  the  lights  are  of  a  subdued  grey  tone  even  in  the 
yeasty  waves ;  the  shape  of  the  mass  of  light  on  the  water  is  broad,  and 
of  a  beautiful  form ;  in  Vandervelde's  (sic)  picture  it  is  spotty  and  devoid 
of  union  with  the  vessel.  In  Turner  we  see  an  obscure  outlined  form  in 
everything,  for  though  the  warm  tints  of  the  masses  of  clouds  serve  to 
break  down  and  diffuse  the  colour  of  the  sails,  their  form  is  disturbed  by 
the  handling  of  his  brush.  In  comparing  the  two  pictures  as  works  of 


52  TURNER. 

art,  Vandervelde's  must  have  the  preference  as  far  as  priority  of  com- 
position is  concerned ;  but  Turner  has  had  the  boldness  to  tell  the  same 
story,  clothing  it  with  all  the  grandeur  and  sublimity  of  natural  representa  - 
tion.  The  light  and  shade  is  very  excellent ;  the  mass  of  dark  sky,  brought 
in  contact  with  the  sail  of  the  advancing  boat,  is  broad  in  the  extreme." 

Of  his  other  rivalries  at  this  period,  those  with  the 
Poussins  and  Titian  are  the  most  notable.  The  one  pro- 
duced the  famous,  and,  in  spite  of  its  poorness  of  colour 
and  conventionality,  the  magnificent,  Goddess  of  Discord 
choosing  the  Apple  of  Contention  in  the  Garden  of  Hesperides, 
exhibited  at  the  British  Institution  in  1806,  and  now  in  the 
National  Gallery;  the  other,  the  Venus  and  Adonis,  still 
more  wonderful  by  reason  of  the  beauty  of  its  colour,  its 
composition,  and  the  audacity  of  the  attempt.  This  was 
bought  by  Mr.  Munro  of  Novar,  and  was  lately  sold  at 
Christie's,  on  the  dispersion  of  the  Novar  collection,  for 
d£l,942.  It  is,  as  far  as  we  know,  the  only  picture  in  which 
he  attempted  with  success  to  draw  the  human  form  on  a 
large  scale,  and  is  certainly  one  of  the  best  efforts  of  the 
English  school  to  rival  the  "old  masters;"  the  figures, 
the  dogs,  and  the  glorious  vine-clad  bower  in  which  they 
are  .set  are  all  worthy  of  the  subject,  and  make  a  picture 
which  reminds  one  of  Titian,  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  and 
Etty  in  about  equal  proportions. 

It  is  strange  that  the  great  sea-pieces  we  have  men- 
tioned were  not  exhibited  (except  perhaps  that  at  Petworth), 
but  the  occupation  of  his  time  by  these  magnificent  works 
of  emulation  accounts  for  his  doing  so  little  for  the  en- 
gravers in  these  years,  for  they  were  all  probably,  except 
the  Wreck  of  the  Minotaur,  painted  before  1807,  when  he 
turned  his  attention  to  his  greatest,  and  perhaps  most 
successful  work  of  the  kind,  the  "  Liber  Studiorum."  And 
here  we  may  remark,  that  emulation  with  Turner,  though 


YORKSHIRE  AND  THE  YOUNG   ACADEMICIAN.         53 

it  may  have  been  a  mark  of  jealousy,  was  always  a  token 
of  respect.  Feelings  crossed  each  other  in  Turner's  mind 
as  colours  did  in  his  works ;  it  is  often  difficult  to  know 
whether  his  feeling  is  to  be  called  noble  or  base,  and  the 
same  complexity  may  be  noticed  in  his  "  artistic  "  motives. 
When  imitating  other  masters  he  brought  his  knowledge 
of  nature  to  bear  strongly  on  his  work  to  make  it  more 
natural ;  when  painting  a  natural  scene,  he  employed  all 
his  traditional  study  to  make  it  more  "  artistic." 

By  this  time,  however,  he  had  learnt  nearly  all  that  was 
to  be  learnt  from  art,  ancient  or  modern,  in  the  landscape 
way,  but  it  was  different  with  nature.  That  was  a  book 
which  he  could  not  exhaust,  though  he  was  never  tired  of 
turning  over  fresh  pages.  It  was  almost  his  only  book, 
and  he  began  a  new  chapter  about  1801  or  1802,  when  he 
made  his  first  tour  on  the  Continent.  Previous  to  this  he 
must  have  paid  a  visit  to  Scotland,  for  the  Exhibition  of 
1802  contained  three  Scotch  views,  one  of  which  was  the 
Kilchurn  already  mentioned.  In  1803  he  exhibited  no  less 
than  six  foreign  subjects,  of  which  one  was  the  Calais  Pier, 
now  in  the  National  Gallery,  another  the  Festival  upon 
the  opening  of  the  Vintage  of  Macon,  in  the  possession  of 
Lord  Yarborough;  the  others  were  Bonneville,  Savoy,  with 
Mont  Blanc  ;  Chateaux  de  Michael,  Bonneville,  Savoy ;  St. 
Hugh  denouncing  vengeance  on  the  Shepherd  of  Courmayeur  in 
the  Valley  of  d'Aoust;  and  Glacier  and  Source  of  the  Arveron 
going  up  to  the  Mer  de  Glace,  in  the  Valley  of  the  Chamouni.1 
After  this  burst  of  foreign  subjects  he  did  not  exhibit  another 
scene  from  abroad  for  twelve  years,  except  the  Fall  of  the 
Ehine  at  Schaffhausen  (1806),  and  content  this  time  with 

1  The  names  of  these  pictures  are  given  as  printed  in  the  Catalogue. 


54  TURNER. 

simpler,  safer,  English,  a  View  of  the  Castle  of  St.  Michael, 
near  Bonneville,  Savoy  (1812).  Daring  the  next  few  years 
the  most  important  picture,  and  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
he  ever  painted,  was  the  famous  Sun  Rising  through  vapour  : 
Fishermen  cleaning  and  selling  Fish,  exchanged  with  Sir 
J.  F.  Leicester  for  The  Shipwreck,  and  now  in  the  National 
Gallery,  together  with  The  Shipwreck  and  Spithead :  Boat's 
Crew  recovering  an  Anchor,  another  fine  picture  of  the 
Vandevelde  class. 

In  all  these  years,  during  which  he  kept  up  this  con- 
stant rivalry  with  so  many  artists,  living  and  dead — and  we 
have  not  exhausted  the  list  of  them — he  was  continuing  his 
unresting  severe  study  of  nature.  For  many  more  years 
this  was  to  continue,  this  double  artistic  life,  the  strife  for 
fame  by  grand  pictures,  of  which  emulation  was  the  motive, 
the  patient  development  of  his  knowledge  and  power  by 
the  close  study  of  nature.  Few  who  watched  his  pictures 
from  year  to  year  could  have  guessed  what  a  store  of 
beautiful  studies  of  the  Alps,  about  Chamouni,  Grenoble, 
and  the  Grande  Chartreuse  he  had  lying  in  his  portfolios  ; 
few  could  imagine  that  with  materials  for  landscapes  of  a 
truthfulness  and  an  original  power  never  before  known, 
he  should  prefer  to  paint  pictures  in  rivalry  with  the  fames 
of  dead  men.  Possibly  he  thought  that  it  was  the  nearest 
way  to  fame  to  show  the  public  that  he  could  beat  Van- 
develde, Poussin,  and  the  rest  of  them  on  their  own  ground; 
possibly  he  may  have  been  diffident  of  his  power  to  dis- 
pense with  their  aid  in  composition.  However  this  may 
have  been,  he  chose  to  ground  his  fame  so.  Even  in  his 
"  Liber,"  he  in  three  years  gave  only  three  foreign  subjects 
out  of  twenty  plates  :  Basle,  Mount  St.  Gothard,  and  the 
LaJce  of  Thun. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE   LIBER   STUDIORUM — HIS    POETRY  AND   DRAGONS. 

IN  1807  Turner  commenced  his  most  serious  rivalry, 
"The  Liber  Studiorum,"  a  rivalry  which  not  only  ex- 
ceeded in  force  but  differed  in  quality  from  his  others.  Pre- 
viously he  had  pitted  his  skill  only  against  that  of  the 
artist  rivalled,  adopting  the  style  of  his  rival,  but  in 
these  engravings  he  pitted  not  only  his  skill,  but  also 
his  style  and  range  of  art  against  Claude's.  There  are  in- 
deed only  a  few  of  the  "  Liber  "  prints  which  are  in  Claude's 
style,  and  most  of  the  best  are  in  his  own.  Lovely  as  are 
Woman  Playing  Tambourine,  and  Hindoo  Devotions,  they 
seem  to  us  far  lower  in  value  than  Mount  St.  Gothard 
and  Hind  Head  Hill.  There  is  the  usual  mixture  of 
feeling  in  the  motives  with  which  Turner  undertook 
this  work,  the  same  dependence  on  others  for  the  start- 
ing impulse  which  we  see  throughout  his  art-life,  the 
same  originality,  industry,  and  confusion  of  thought  in 
carrying  out  his  design.  The  idea  of  the  "Liber"  did 
not  originate  with  him,  but  with  his  friend  Mr.  W.  F. 
Wells.  The  idea  was  noble  in  so  far  as  it  attempted 
to  extend  the  bounds  of  landscape  art  beyond  previous 
limits,  to  break  down  the  Claude  worship  which  blinded 
the  eyes  of  the  public  to  the  merit  that  existed  in  con- 
temporary work,  and  prevented  them,  and  artists  also, 
from  looking  to  nature  as  the  source  of  landscape  art. 


THE   LIBER   STUDIORUM.  57 

It  is  scarcely  too  much  to  say  that  in  those  days  Claude 
stood  between  nature  and  the  artist,  and  that  he  was 
as  much  the  standard  of  landscape  art  as  Pheidias  of 
sculpture.  To  try  to  clear  away  this  barrier  of  pro- 
gress, as  Hogarth  had  striven  years  before  to  abolish 
the  "  black  masters,"  was  no  ignoble  effort,  and  it  was  done 
in  a  nobler  spirit  than  that  of  Hogarth,  for  he  did  not  attempt 
to  depreciate  his  rival.  Yet  the  nobility  of  the  attempt  was 
not  unmixed,  for  if  he  did  not  disparage  Claude,  he  at- 
tempted to  make  himself  famous  at  Claude's  expense.  He 
did  not  indeed  say,  as  Hogarth  would  have  done,  "  Claude 
is  bad,  I  am  good ; "  but  he  said,  "  Claude  is  good,  but  I  am 
better."  His  own  experience  even  from  very  early  days 
should  have  told  him  that,  despite  the  cant  of  connoisseurs 
and  the  strength  of  old  traditions,  no  purely  original  work 
of  his  had  passed  unnoticed,  and  that  the  truest  and  noblest 
way  of  educating  the  public  taste  was  by  following  the  bent 
of  his  original  genius,  and  leaving  the  public  to  draw  their 
own  comparisons. 

Mr.  Wells's  daughter  states  that  not  only  did  the  "Liber 
Studiorum  "  entirely  owe  its  existence  to  her  father's  per- 
suasion, but  the  divisions  into  "  Pastoral,"  "  Elegant  Pas- 
toral," "  Marine,"  &c.,  were  also  suggested  by  him.  Turner 
determined  to  print  and  publish  and  sell  the  "Liber  "  him- 
self, but  to  employ  an  engraver.  His  first  choice  fell  on 
"  Mr.  F.  C.  Lewis,  the  best  aquatint  engraver  of  the  day, 
who  at  the  very  time  was  at  work  on  facsimiles  of  Claude's 
drawings."  l  With  him  he  soon  quarrelled.  The  terms  were, 
that  Turner  was  to  etch  and  Lewis  to  aquatint  at  five 
guineas  a  plate.  The  first  plate,  Bridge  and  Goats,  was 

1  Rawlinson. 


58  TURNER. 

finished  and  accepted  by  Turner,  though  not  published  till 
April,  1812;  but  the  second  plate  Turner  gave  Lewis  the 
option  of  etching  as  well  as  aquatinting,  and  he  etched  it 
accordingly,  and  sent  a  proof  to  Turner,  raising  his  charge 
from  five  guineas  to  eight,  in  consideration  of  the  extra 
work.  Turner  praised  it,  but  declined  to  have  the  plate 
engraved,  on  the  ground  that  Lewis  had  raised  his  charges. 
This  ended  Mr.  Lewis's  connection  with  the  "  Liber,"  and 
Turner  next  employed  Mr.  Charles  Turner,  the  mezzotint 
engraver,  but  he  had  to  pay  him  eight  guineas  a  plate. 
Charles  Turner  agreed  to  engrave  fifty  plates  at  this  price, 
but  after  he  had  finished  twenty,  he  wished  to  raise  his 
charge  to  ten  guineas,  which  led  to  a  quarrel.  With 
reference  to  these  quarrels  of  Turner  with  his  engravers, 
Mr.  Thornbury  says,  "  The  painter  who  had  never  had 
quarter  given  to  him  when  he  was  struggling,  now  in  his 
turn,  I  grieve  to  say,  gave  no  quarter,"  and  "  inflexibly 
exacting  as  he  was,  Turner  could  not  understand  how  an 
engraver  who  had  contracted  to  do  fifty  engravings  should 
try  to  get  off  his  bargain  at  the  twenty-first."  This,  like 
most  of  Thornbury's  statements,  is  utterly  untrustworthy. 
There  is  no  evidence  to  show  that  a  hard  bargain  was  ever 
driven  with  him  when  he  was  struggling,  there  is  no  word 
of  any  dispute  with  engravers  till  he  began  to  employ  them 
himself,  and  as  to  his  "  not  being  able  to  understand  "  how 
any  man  should  endeavour  to  obtain  more  than  the  price 
contracted  for,  it  was  exactly  what  he  tried  to  do  himself, 
when  afterwards  employed  by  Cooke. 

The  fact  is  that  in  all  business  arrangements  Turner's 
worse  nature,  the  mean,  grasping  spirit  of  the  little  trades- 
man, was  brought  into  prominence.  In  the  case  of  Lewis  he 
was  evidently  in  the  wrong,  in  the  case  of  Charles  Turner 


THE   ALPS   AT   DAYBREAK. 

From  Bogers's ''  Poems" 


60  TURNER. 

he  was  only  hard  ;  but  in  all  business  transactions  he  was 
as  a  rule  tmgenerons,  and  sometimes  dishonest.  His  action 
towards  the  public  with  regard  to  the  "  Liber"  can  be 
called  by  no  other  name.  His  prices  at  first  were 
fifteen  shillings  for  prints,  and  twenty-five  shillings  for 
proofs.  When  the  plates  got  worn  (and  mezzotint  plates 
are  subject  to  rapid  deterioration  in  the  light  parts), 
Turner  used  to  alter  them,  sometimes  changing  the  effect 
greatly,  as  in  the  Mer  de  Glace,  where  he  transformed  the 
smooth,  snow-covered  glacier  into  spiky  ridges  of  ice,  or 
in  the  yEsacus  and  Hesperie,  where  the  effect  of  sunbeams 
through  the  wood  was  effaced,  and  the  direction  in  which 
the  head  of  Hesperie  was  looking  was  changed,  and  the 
face  afterwards  concealed.  The  changes  were  not  always  for 
the  worse  ;  the  very  wear  of  the  plate  in  some  cases,  as  in 
that  of  the  Calm,  improved  the  effect,  and  what  we  have  called 
his  confusion  of  thought,  and  what  Thornbury  has  called 
his  "  distorted  logic,"  may  have  led  him  to  believe  that  he 
was  not  wrong  in  selling  as  he  did  these  worn  and  altered 
plates  as  proofs.  A  kind  casuistry  may  lend  us  a  word  less 
disagreeable  than  dishonest  to  such  transactions,  but  when 
we  know  that  he  habitually  from  the  first  made  no  distinc- 
tion between  proofs  and  prints — that  he  sold  the  same  things 
under  different  names  at  different  prices — every  plea  breaks 
down,  and  we  are  forced  to  the  conclusion  that  when  he 
thought  he  could  cheat  safely  "  the  pack  of  geese,"  '  as 
he  thought  the  public,  he  did  so. 

Nor  can  we  acquit  Turner  of  unfairness  in  issuing  the 

1  See  saying  of  Turner's  reported  by  Mr.  Halstead,  and  printed  in 
note  in  Mr.  Kawlinson's  "Turner's  Liber  Studiorum,  Macmillan  and 
Co.,  1878,"  from  which  excellent  work  most  of  the  above  information  ia 
derived. 


THE   LIBER   STUDIORUM.  61 

"  Liber  Studiorum "  in  competition  with  the  French 
painter's  "  Liber  Veritatis,"  a  book  well-known  to  the 
public  and  to  him,  as  the  third  edition  of  its  plates,  engraved 
by  Earlom,  was  just  issued,  when  the  "  Liber  Studiorum  " 
was  begun.  He  must  have  known  what  the  public  did  not 
probably  know — that  Claude's  rough  sketches  were  mere 
memoranda  of  the  effects  of  his  pictures  taken  by  him  to 
identify  them,  and  never  meant  for  publication  ;  whereas 
his  were  carefully-finished  compositions,  into  which  he 
threw  his  whole  power.  Not  only  was  the  publication 
unfair  as  regards  Claude,  but  it  was  misleading  to  the 
public  as  regards  himself.  The  title,  "  Liber  Studiornm," 
applies  only  to  some  of  the  prints.  A  few  of  the  poorer 
plates,  especially  the  architectural  ones,  and  such  simple 
designs  as  the  Hedging  and  Ditching,  might  properly 
perhaps  have  been  called  studies,  but  even  upon  these  he 
bestowed  a  care  and  a  finish  that  would  entitle  them  to  be 
called  pictures,  monochrome  as  they  are. 

The  want  of  a  well-considered  plan,  and  the  capricious 
way  in  which  they  were  published,  contributed  to  the 
ill-success  of  the  work  ;  and  though  we  are  accustomed  to 
look  upon  its  failure  as  a  severe  judgment  on  the  taste  of 
the  time,  we  are  not  at  all  sure  that  it  would  have  succeeded 
if  published  in  the  present  day,  unless  Mr.  Ruskin  had 
written  the  advertisement. 

"  The  meaning  of  the  entire  book,"  according  to  that  eloquent  writer, 
"  was  symbolized  in  the  frontispiece,1  which  he  engraved  with  his  own 
hand  :  *  Tyre  at  Sunset,  with  the  Rape  of  Europa,  indicating  the  sym- 
bolism of  the  decay  of  Europe  by  that  of  Tyre,  its  beauty  passing 


1  Not  issued  till  the  10th  part,  or  over  five  years  from  the  publication 
of  the  first.  *  Only  a  portion  of  it,  the  picture. 


62  TURNER. 

away  into  terror  and  judgment  (Europa  being  the  Mother  of  Minos  and 
Rhadamanthus)." 

Turner's  advertisement  thus  describes  the  intention  of 
the  work : — 

"  Intended  as  an  illustration  of  Landscape  Composition,  classed  as  fol- 
lows :  Historical,  Mountainous,  Pastoral,  Marine,  and  Architectural." 

We  think  Turner's  description  the  more  correct,  and 
that  the  intention  of  his  frontispiece  was  to  give  all  the 
"  classes  "  in  one  composition,  and  we  are  extremely  doubt- 
ful whether  Turner  knew  or  cared  anything  about  either 
Minos  or  Bhadamanthus. 

The  most  obvious  intention  of  the  work  was  to  show 
his  own  power,  and  there  never  was,  and  perhaps  never 
will  be  again,  such  an  exhibition  of  genius  in  the  same 
direction.  No  rhetoric  can  say  for  it  as  much  as  it  says 
for  itself  in  those  ninety  plates,  twenty  of  which  were 
never  published.  If  he  did  not  exhaust  art  or  nature,  he  may 
be  fairly  said  to  have  exhausted  all  that  was  then  known 
of  landscape  art,  and  to  have  gone  further  than  any  one 
else  in  the  interpretation  of  nature.  Notwithstanding,  the 
merit  of  the  plates  is  very  unequal,  some,  as  Solway  Hoss 
and  the  Little  Devil's  Bridge,  being  more  valuable  as  works 
of  art  than  many  of  his  large  pictures ;  others,  especially 
the  architectural  subjects,  the  Interior  of  a  Church,  and 
Penibury  Mill,  being  almost  devoid  of  interest.  As  to  any 
one  thought  running  through  the  series,  we  can  see  none, 
except  desire  to  show  the  whole  range  of  his  power ;  and 
as  to  sentiment,  it  seems  to  us  to  be  thoroughly  impersonal, 
impartial,  and  artistic.  He  turns  on  the  pastoral  or 
historical  stop  as  easily  as  if  he  were  playing  the  organ, 
and  his  only  concern  with  his  figures  is  that  they  shall 


THE    LIBER  STUDIORUM.  63 

perform  their  parts  adequately,  which  is  as  much  as  some 
of  them  do. 

We  have  spoken  of  the  book  as  an  attack  on  Claude,  and 
of  the  "  intention  "  of  the  work,  but  we  are  not  sure  that  we 
are  not  using  too  definite  ideas  to  express  the  variety  of 
impulses  in  Turner's  mind  that  tended  to  the  commence- 
ment of  the  "  Liber."  We  have  seen  that  the  first  notion 
of  it,  and  its  divisions,  were  suggested  by  Mr.  Wells,  and 
the  plates  are  nothing  more  nor  less  than  a  selection  from 
his  sketches  and  pictures,  arranged  under  these  heads.  His 
early  topographical  drawings  and  studies  in  England  pro- 
vided him  with  the  architectural  and  pastoral  subjects, 
his  studies  of  Claude  and  the  Poussins  and  Wilson,  with 
the  elegant  pastoral,  Vandevelde  and  nature  with  the 
marine,  and  his  one  or  two.  visits  to  the  Continent  with  the 
mountainous.  The  frontispiece,  the  first  attempt  to  give 
a  coherent  signification  to  the  whole,  was  not  published 
till  1812,  and  it  was  not  till  1816  that  the  advertisement 
to  which  we  have  called  attention  appeared  when,  after  four 
years'  intermission,  the  issue  of  the  "  Liber  "  was  recom- 
menced ;  even  then  it  is  only  described  as  "  an  illustration 
of  Landscape  Composition ;"  and  it  is  quite  probable  that  the 
desire  to  make  money,  to  display  his  art,  to  rival  Claude,  and 
to  educate  the  public,  contributed  to  the  production  of  the 
work,  without  any  very  vivid  consciousness  on  his  part  as 
to  his  motives  of  action.  It  has,  like  all  Turner's  work, 
the  characteristics  of  a  gradual  growth  rather  than  of  the 
carrying  out  of  a  well-defined  conception. 

There  is  one  way  in  which  the  title  of  the  book  may  be 
considered  as  appropriate,  and  that  is  to  take  "  studia"  to 
mean  "  studies,"  in  the  usual  general  sense  of  the  word,  for 
it  is  an  index  to  his  whole  course  of  study  (including  books 


64  TURNER. 

and  excepting  colour),  down  to  the  time  of  its  publication. 
With  the  exception  of  his  Venetian  pictures  and  his  later 
extravagances,  it  may  be  said  to  be  an  epitome  of  his  art 
without  colour.  Poets  and  painters  may  change  their 
style,  and  may  develop  their  powers  in  after-life  in  an 
unexpected  manner ;  but  after  the  age  at  which  Turner 
had  arrived  when  he  commenced  to  publish  the  "  Liber," 
viz.,  thirty-two,  there  are  few,  if  any,  mental  germs  which 
have  not  at  least  sprouted.  Turner,  though  he  never  left 
off  acquiring  knowledge,  or  developing  his  style,  is  no  ex- 
ception to  this  rule,  and  this  makes  the  "  Liber"  valuable, 
not  only  as  a  collection  of  works  of  art,  but  as  a  nearly 
complete  summary  of  the  great  artist's  work  and  mind. 
Amongst  his  more  obvious  claims  to  the  first  place  among 
landscape  artists,  are  his  power  of  rendering  atmospherical 
effects,  and  the  structure  and  growth  of  things.  He  not 
only  knew  how  a  tree  looked,  but  he  showed  how  it  grew. 
Others  may  have  drawn  foliage  with  more  habitual  fidelity, 
but  none  ever  drew  trunks  and  branches  with  such  know- 
ledge of  their  inner  life  ;  if  you  look  at  the  trunks  in  the 
drawing  of  Hornby  Castle  for  instance  (which  we  mention 
because  it  is  easily  seen  at  the  South  Kensington  Museum), 
and  compare  them  with  any  others  in  the  same  room, 
the  superior  indication  of  texture  of  bark,  of  truly  varied 
swelling,  of  consistency,  and  all  essential  differences  between 
living  wood  and  other  things,  cannot  fail  to  be  apparent  to 
the  least  observant.  Although  the  trees  of  the  "  Liber  " 
are  not  of  equal  merit  (Mr.  Ruskin  says  the  firs  are  not 
good),  this  quality  may  be  observed  in  many  of  the  plates. 
Others  have  drawn  the  appearance  of  clouds,  but  Turner 
knew  how  they  formed.  Others  have  drawn  rocks,  but  he 
could  give  their  structure,  consistency,  and  quality  of 


FALLS   IN    VALOMBHfi. 

From  Bogers's  "Jacqiuline." 


66  TURNER. 

surface,  with  a  few  deft  lines  and  a  wash ;  others  could 
hide  things  in  a  mist,  but  he  could  reveal  things  through 
mist.     Others  could  make  something  like  a  rainbow,  but 
he,  almost  alone,  and  without  colour,  could  show  it  stand- 
ing out,  a  bow  of  light  arrested  by  vapour  in  mid-air,  not 
flat  upon  a  mountain,  or  printed  on  a  cloud.  If  all  his  power 
over  atmospheric  effects  and  all  his  knowledge  of  structure 
are  not  contained  in  the  "  Liber,"  there  is  sufficient  proof  of 
them  scattered  through  its  plates  to  do  as  much  justice  to 
them  as  black  and  white  will  allow.     If  we  want  to  know 
the  result  of  his  studies  of  architecture  we  see  it  here  also, 
little  knowledge  or  care  of  buildings  for  their  own  sakes, 
but  perfect  sense  of  their  value  pictorially  for  breaking  of 
lights  and  casting  of  shadows  ;  for  contrast  with  the  unde- 
fined beauty  of  natural  forms,  and  for  masses  in  compo- 
sition; for  the  sentiment  that  ruins  lend,  and  for  the  names 
which  they  give  to  pictures.     If  we  seek  the  books  from 
which  his  imagination  took  fire,  we  have  the  Bible  and 
Ovid,  the  first  of  small,  the  latter  of  great  and  almost 
solitary  power.     Jason  daring  the  huge  glittering  serpent, 
Syrinx  fleeing  from  Pan,  Cephalus  and  Procris,  ^Esacus  and 
Hesperie,  Glaucus  and  Scylla,  Narcissus  and  Echo ;  if  we 
want  to  know  the  artists  he  most  admired  and  imitated, 
or  the  places  to  which  he  had  been,  we  shall  find  easily 
nearly  all  the  former,  and  sufficient  of  the  latter  to  show 
the  wide  range  of  his  travel.     In  a  word,  one  who  has 
carefully  studied  the  "  Liber"  had  indeed  little  to  learn  of 
the  range  and  power  of  Turner's  art  and  mind,  except  his 
colour  and  his  fatalism. 

The  first  quotation  from  the  "  Fallacies  of  Hope,"  never- 
theless, was  published  in  the  catalogue  of  1812,  as  the 
motto  of  his  picture  of  Snowstorm — Hannibal  and  his  Army 


HIS   POETRY   AND   DRAGON'S.  67 

Crossing  the  Alps,  and  it  is  probable  that  the  ill-success  of 
the  "  Liber  "  contributed  not  a  little  to  the  gloomy  habit 
of  mind  which  breathes  through  the  fragments  of  this 
unfinished  composition.  These  were  the  lines  appended 
to  that  grand  picture : — 

"  Craft,  treachery,  and  fraud — Salassian  force 
Hung  on  the  fainting  rear !  then  Plunder  seiz'd 
The  victor  and  the  captive — Saguntum's  spoil, 
Alike  became  their  prey;  still  the  chief  advanc'd, 
Look'd  on  the  sun  with  hope ; — low,  broad,  and  wan. 
While  the  fierce  archer  of  the  downward  year 
Stains  Italy's  blanch'd  barrier  with  storms. 
In  vain  each  pass,  ensanguin'd  deep  with  dead, 
Or  rocky  fragments,  wide  destruction  roll'd. 
Still  on  Campania's  fertile  plains — he  thought 
But  the  loud  breeze  sob'd,  Capua's  joys  beware." 

This  is  nearer  to  poetry  than  Turner  ever  got  again. 
The  picture  is  well-known,  and  was  suggested  partly  by  a 
storm  observed  at  Farnley,  partly  by  a  picture  by  J.  Cozens,1 
of  the  same  subject,  from  which  Turner  is  reported  to  have 
said  that  he  learnt  more  than  from  any  other. 

Turner's  love  of  poetry  was  shown  from  the  first  possible 
moment.  The  first  pictures  to  which  he  appended  poetical 
mottoes  were  those  of  1798,  but  he  could  not  have  used 
them  before,  as  quotations  were  never  published  in  the 
Academy  Catalogue  prior  to  that  year.  When  his  first 
original  verses  were  published  we  cannot  tell,  but  there  is 
little  doubt  that  the  lines  to  his  Apollo  and  tlie  Python,  in 


1  The  only  picture  exhibited  at  the  Academy  by  this  artist  It  was 
called  ^4  Landscape,  with  Hannibal  in  his  March  over  (he  Alps,  showing  to 
his  Army  the  Fertile  Plains  of  Italy.  As  its  year  of  exhibition  was  177C, 
it  would  be  interesting  to  learn  where  Turner  saw  this  picture.  Where 
is  it  now  ?  Our  information  on  the  subject  is  derived  from  Redgrave's 
"  Century  of  Painters." 


68  TURNER. 

the  Catalogue  of  1811,  were  of  his  own  fabrication.  They 
are  not  from  Callimachus,  as  asserted  in  the  catalogue,  but  a 
jumble  of  the  descriptions  of  two  of  Ovid's  dragons,  the 
.Python,  and  Cadmus's  tremendous  worm,  and  are  just  the 
peculiar  mixture  of  Ovid,  Milton,  Thomson,  Pope,  and 
the  quotations  in  Royal  Academy  Catalogues,  out  of  which 
he  formed  his  poetical  style.  The  Turneresque  style  of 
poetry  is  in  fact  formed  very  much  in  the  same  way  as  the 
Turneresque  style  of  landscape,  but  the  result  is  not  so 
satisfactory.  It  required  a  totally  different  kind  of  brain 
machinery  from  that  which  Turner  possessed.  He  may 
have  had  a  good  ear  for  the  music  of  tones,  for  he  used  to 
play  the  flute,  but  he  had  none  for  the  music  of  words. 
Coleridge  was  an  instance  of  how  distinct  these  two 
faculties  are,  as  he,  whose  verses  exceed  almost  all  other 
English  verses  in  beauty  of  sound,  could  not  tell  one  note 
of  music  from  another.  Turner  lived  in  a  world  of  light 
and  colour,  and  beautiful  changeful  indefinite  forms ;  his 
thought  had  visions  in  place  of  words  ;  his  mind  communed 
with  itself  in  sights  and  symbols ;  the  procession  of  his 
ideas  was  a  panorama.  So,  where  a  poet  would  jot  down 
lines  and  thoughts,  he  would  print  off  the  impressions  on 
his  mental  retina ;  his  true  poetry  was  drawn  not  written — 
the  poetry  of  instant  act,  not  of  laboured  thought.  How 
sensible  he  himself  was  of  the  difference,  is  shown  in  his 
clumsy  lines  : — 

"  Perception,  reasoning,  action's  slow  ally, 
Thoughts  that  in  the  mind  awakened  lie — 
Kindly  expand  the  monumental  stone 
And  as  the    ....    continue  power." 

This  is  Mr.  Thornbury's  reading  of  part  of  the  longest 
piece  of  poetry  by  Turner  yet  published,  which  he  has 


HIS  POETRY    AND   DRAGONS.  69 

printed  without  any  care,  making  greater  nonsense  than 
even  Turner  ever  wrote,  which  is  saying  a  great  deal. 
"  Awakened  "  for  instance  is  probably  "  unwakened,"  and 
"  monumental  stone  "  is  probably  "  mental  store  "  with 
another  word  at  the  commencement,  the  word  "power"  is 
possibly  "  pours,"  as  the  next  line  goes  on,  "  a  steady 
current,  nor  with  headlong  force,"  &c.  We  quite  agree 
with  Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti,  that  these  extracts  are  not  made 
the  best  of,  though  it  is  doubtful  whether  the  result  of 
more  careful  editing  would  be  worth  the  trouble. 

There  is  no  picture  which  better  shows  the  greatness 
of  Turner's  power  of  pictorial  imagination  than  the 
Apollo  and  Python.  We  have  said  that  nature  was 
almost  Turner's  only  book.  The  only  written  book  which 
there  is  evidence  that  he  really  studied — read  through, 
probably,  again  and  again — is  Ovid's  "  Metamorphoses." 
That  he  was  fond  of  poetry  there  is  no  doubt,  but  the 
sparks  that  lit  his  imagination  for  nearly  all  his  best 
classical  compositions  came  from  this  book.  This  is  the 
only  poem  which  he  really  illustrated,  and  an  edition  of 
Ovid,  with  engravings  from  all  the  scenes  which  he  drew 
from  this  source,  would  make  one  of  the  best  illustrated 
books  in  the  world.  It  would  contain  Jason,  Narcissus  and 
Echo,  Mercury  and  Herse,  Apollo  and  Python,  Apuleia  in 
search  of  Apuleius  (which  is  really  the  story  of  Appulus, 
who  was  turned  into  a  wild  olive-tree,  Apuleia  being  a  cha- 
racteristic mistake  of  Turner's  for  Apulia.  He  is  sometimes 
called  "  a  shepherd  of  Apulia,"  in  notes  and  translations, 
and  Turner  evidently  took  the  name  of  the  country  for  the 
name  of  a  woman),  Apollo  and  the  Sibyl,  The  Vision  of 
Medea,  The  Golden  Bough,  Mercury  and  Argus,  Pluto  and 
Proserpine,  Glaucus  and  Scylla,  Pan  and  Syrinx,  Ulysses 


70  TURNER. 

and  Polyphemus.  Of  all  these  pictures  and  designs  we  have 
no  doubt  that,  though  he  referred  to  other  poets  in  the  cata- 
logues and  got  the  idea  of  some  part  of  the  composition 
from  other  poets,  the  original  germs  are  to  be  found  in  no 
other  book  than  Ovid's  "  Metamorphoses."  We  have  not 
exhausted  the  list  of  his  debts  to  this  poet,  for  it  is  pro- 
bable that  the  first  ideas  of  his  Carthage  pictures,  and  all 
that  deal  with  the  history  of  ./Eneas,  came  from  the  same 
source,  assisted  by  references  to  Vergil. 

Of  all  these,  excepting  the  Ulysses  and  Polyphemus,  there 
is  none  greater  than  the  Apollo  and  Python.  Although 
the  figure  of  Apollo  is  not  satisfactory,  it  gives  an  ade- 
quate impression  of  the  small  size  of  the  boy-god,  the 
radiating  glory  of  his  presence,  the  keen  enjoyment  of  his 
struggle  with  the  monster,  and  the  triumph  of  "  mind  over 
matter."  Of  the  landscape  and  the  dragon  it  is  difficult  to 
exaggerate  the  grandeur  of  the  conception  ;  the  rocks  and 
trees  convulsed  with  the  dying  struggles  of  the  gigantic 
worm,  the  agony  of  the  brute  himself,  expressed  in  the  dis- 
torted jaws  and  the  twisted  tail,  the  awful  dark  pool  of 
blood  below,  the  seams  in  its  terrible  riven  side,  studded  with 
a  thousand  little  shafts  from  Apollo's  bow,  and  the  frag- 
ments of  rock  flying  in  the  air  above  the  griffin-like  head  and 
noisome  steam  of  breath,  make  a  picture  without  any  rival 
of  its  kind  in  ancient  or  modern  art.  It  is,  as  we  have 
said,  taken  from  two  dragons  of  Ovid.  Turner  seems 
to  have  been  of  the  same  opinion  about  books  as  about 
nature,  and  if  he  wanted  anything  to  complete  his  picture, 
went  on  a  few  pages  and  found  it.  The  idea  of  the  god 
and  his  bow  and  arrows  is  taken  from  the  account  of  the 
combat  in  the  first  book  of  the  "  Metamorphoses,"  and  the 
idea  of  the  huge  dragon  with  his  "  poyson-paunch,"  comes 


v> 


ALLEGOHT. 

From  Rogers s  "Voyage  of  Columhus." 


72  TURNER. 

from  the  same  place;  but  the  ruin  of  the  woodland,  the  flying 
stones,  and  the  earth  blackened  with  the  dragon's  gore, 
come  from  the  description  of  the  combat  of  Cadmus  and 
his  dragon  in  the  third.  The  larger  stone  is  too  huge  in- 
deed to  be  that  which  Cadmus  flung,  it  has  been  either, 
as  Mr.  Ruskin  thinks,  lashed  into  the  air  by  his  tail,  or, 
as  we  think,  torn  off  the  rock  and  vomited  into  the  air ; 
but  there  is  the  tree,  which  the  "  serpent's  weight "  did 
make  to  bend,  and  which  was  "  grieved  his  body  of  the 
serpent's  tail  thus  scourged  for  to  be,"  there  is  "  the  stink- 
ing breath  that  goth  out  from  his  black  and  hellish  mouth," 
there  is  the  blood  which  "  did  die  the  green  grass  black," 
an  idea  not  in  Callimachus  nor  in  Ovid's  description  of  the 
Python,  but  which  occurs  both  in  the  lines  appended  to  the 
picture  and  in  Ond's  description  of  Cadmus's  serpent.  If 
there  were  any  doubt  left  as  to  the  influence  of  this  dragon 
on  the  picture,  there  is  still  another  piece  of  evidence,  viz., 
something  very  like  a  javelin,  Cadmus's  weapon,  which  is 
sticking  in  the  dragon,  and  has  reappeared  after  being 
painted  out,  so  that  it  is  possible  that  Turner  meant  the 
hero  of  the  picture,  in  the  first  instance,  to  be  Cadmus 
and  not  Apollo. 

The  two  great  dragons  of  Turner,  that  which  guards  the 
Garden  of  the  Hesperides,  and  the  Python,  are  specially 
interesting  as  the  greatest  efforts  made  by  Turner's  imagi- 
nation in  the  creation  of  living  forms,  excepting,  perhaps, 
the  cloud  figure  of  Polyphemus.  They  are  perhaps  the 
only  monsters  of  the  kind  created  by  an  artist's  fancy, 
which  are  credible  even  for  a  moment.  They  will  not 
stand  analysis  any  more  than  any  other  painters'  monsters, 
but  you  can  enjoy  the  pictures  without  being  disturbed  by 
palpable  impossibilities.  The  distance  at  which  we  see 


HIS  POETRY   AND  DRAGONS.  73 

Ladon  helps  the  illusion  ;  with  his  fiery  eyes  and  smoking 
jaws,  his  spiny  back  and  terrible  tail,  no  one  conld  wish 
for  a  more  probable  reptile.  The  only  objection  that  has 
been  made  to  him  is  that  his  jaws  are  too  thin  and  brittle, 
while  Mr.  Ruskin  is  extravagant  in  his  praise.  It  is  wonder- 
ful to  him — 

"  This  anticipation,   by  Turner,  of  the   grandest   reaches  of  recent 

inquiry  into  the  form  of  the  dragons  of  the  old  earth this 

saurian  of  Turner's  is  very  nearly  an  exact  counterpart  of  the  model  of 
the  iguanodon,  now  the  guardian  of  the  Hesperian  Garden  of  the  Crystal 
Palace,  wings  only  excepted,  which  are,  here,  almost  accurately,  those 
of  the  pterodactyle.  The  instinctive  grasp  which  a  healthy  imagination 
takes  of  possible  truth,  even  in  its  wildest  flights,  was  never  more  mar- 
vellously demonstrated." 

Mr.  Ruskin  then  goes  on  to  call  attention  to — 

"  The  mighty  articulations  of  his  body,  rolling  in  great  iron  waves,  a 
cataract  of  coiling  strength  and  crashing  armour,  down  amongst  the 
mountain  rents.  Fancy  him  moving,  and  the  roaring  of  the  ground 
under  his  rings;  the  grinding  down  of  the  rocks  by  his  toothed  whorls; 
the  skeleton  glacier  of  him  in  thunderous  march,  and  the  ashes  of  the 
hills  rising  round  him  like  smoke,  and  encompassing  him  like  a 
curtain." 

The  description,  fine  as  it  is,  seems  to  us  to  destroy  all 
belief  in  Turner's  dragon.  The  wings  of  a  pterodactyle 
would  never  lift  the  body  of  an  iguanodon,  and  Turner's 
dragon  could  not  even  walk,  his  comparatively  pany  body 
could  never  even  move  his  miles  of  tail,  let  alone  lift  them.  It 
is  far  better  to  leave  him  where  he  is  ;  the  fact  that  he  is 
at  the  top  of  that  rock  is  sufficient  evidence  that  he  got 
there  somehow ;  how  he  got  there,  and  how  he  will  get  down 
again,  are  questions  which  we  had  better  not  ask  if  we  wish 
to  keep  our  faith  in  him.  Nor  can  anything  be  more  con- 
fused than  the  notion  of  a  "saurian  "  with  "coiling  strength 


74  TURNER. 

and  crashing  armour,"  making  the  ground  "  roar  under  his 
rings."  This  might  be  well  enough  of  a  fabulous  monster 
made  of  iron,  but  quite  inappropriate  when  applied  to  a 
saurian,  like  the  alligator,  for  instance,  with  its  soft,  slow 
movements,  and  its  bony,  skin-padded,  noiseless  armour. 

The  Python  will  stand  still  less  an  attempt  to  define  in 
words  what  Turner  has  purposely  left  mysterious.  Not 
even  Mr.  Ruskin,  we  fancy,  would  dare  to  pull  him  out 
straight  from  amongst  his  rocks  and  trees,  and  put  his 
griffin's  head  and  talons  on  to  that  marvellous  body,  half 
worm,  half  caterpillar.  But  he  is  grand,  and  believable  as 
he  is.  More  simple  than  either  of  the  other  monsters  is  the 
single  wave  of  Jason's  dragon  in  his  den.  This  is  a  mere 
magnified  coil  of  a  simple  snake ;  but  its  size,  its  glitter,  its 
incompleteness,  the  terrible  energy  of  it,  its  peculiar  ser- 
pentine wiriness,  that  elasticity  combined  with  stiffness 
which  is  so  horrible  to  see  and  to  feel,  make  it  more  awful 
even  than  the  Pjthon. 

We  do  not  believe  in  Turner's  power  to  evolve  even  as 
imperfect  a  saurian  as  his  Ladon  out  of  his  imagination, 
however  "  healthy  ;"  and  have  no  doubt  that  he  had  seen 
the  fossil  remains  of  an  ichthyosaurus.  We  have  the  testi- 
mony of  Mrs.  Wheeler  that  he  was  much  interested  in 
geology,  and  think  it  more  than  probable  that  the  thinness 
of  the  monster's  jaws  and,  we  may  add,  the  emptiness  of 
his  eye  socket  are  due  to  his  drawing  them  from  a  fossil, 
which  his  knowledge  was  not  great  enough  to  pad  with 
flesh. 

1  Thornbury,  p.  236. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

HARLET  STREET,  DEVONSHIRE,  HAMMERSMITH,  AND  TWICKENHAM. 
1800  TO  1820. 

DURING  the  first  ten  years  of  this  period  we  have 
very  little  intelligence  respecting  Turner's  life.  He 
moved  from  Hand  Court,  Maiden  Lane,  to  64,  Harley 
Street,  in  1799  or  1800,  and  it  is  not  improbable  that  he 
bought  the  house,  as  No.  64  and  the  house  next  to  it  in 
Harley  Street,  and  the  house  in  Queen  Anne  Street,  all  be- 
longed to  him  at  the  time  of  his  death.  There  was  communi- 
cation between  the  three  houses  at  the  back,  although  the 
corner  house  fronting  both  streets  did  not  belong  to  him. 
In  1801,  1802,  1803,  and  1804,  his  address  in  the  Royal 
Academy  Catalogue  is  75,  Norton  Street,  Portland  Road  ; 
but  in  1804  it  is  again  64,  Harley  Street.  In  1808  1  it 
is  64,  Harley  Street,  and  West  End,  Upper  Mall,  Hammer- 
smith ;  and  this  double  address  is  given  till  1811,  when  it 
is  West  End,  Upper  Mall,  Hammersmith,  only.  In  and 
after  1812  it  is  always  Queen  Anne  Street  West,  with 
the  addition,  from  1814  to  1826,  of  his  house  at  Twicken- 
ham, called  Solus  Lodge  in  1814,  and  Sandycombe  Lodge 

1  He  became  Professor  of  Perspective  to  the  Royal  Academy  in  this 
year. 


76  TURNER. 

from  1815  to  1826.  It  is  remarkable  that  in  the  Cata- 
logue of  the  British  Institution  for  1814  his  address  is 
given  as  Harley  Street,  Cavendish  Square,  showing  that 
he  had  not  then  given  up  his  house  in  this  street,  and 
this  is  good  evidence  that  it  belonged  to  him. 

The  war  which  broke  out  with  Bonaparte  in  1803,1  and 
was  not  finally  closed  till  1815,  prevented  him  from  pur- 
suing his  studies  of  Continental  scenery,  and  he  seems 
during  this  time  to  have  devoted  himself  principally  to  the 
composition  of  his  great  rival  pictures,  and  the  "  Liber 
Studiorum,"  about  which  we  have  already  written :  he 
stayed  occasionally  with  his  friends,  Mr.  Fawkes  at  Farnley, 
where  he  studied  the  storm  for  Hannibal  Crossing  the  Alps, 
and  Lord  Egremont  at  Petworth,  where  he  painted  Apuleia 
and  Apuleius.  Almost  the  only  glimpse  that  we  get  of  his 
house  in  Harley  Street,  though  it  is  very  doubtful  to  what 
period  it  belongs,  was  sent  to  Mr.  Thornbury  by  Mr.  Rose 
of  Jersey : — 

"  Two  ladies,  Mrs.  R and  Mrs.  H once  paid  him  a  visit  in 

Harley  Street,  an  extremely  rare  (in  fact,  if  not  the  only)  occasion  of 
such  an  occurrence,  for  it  must  be  known  he  was  not  fond  of  parties 
prying,  as  he  fancied,  into  the  secrets  of  his  menage.  On  sending  in 
their  names,  after  having  ascertained  that  he  was  at  home,  they  were 
politely  requested  to  walk  in,  and  were  shown  into  a  large  sitting  room 
without  a  fire.  This  was  in  the  depth  of  winter  ;  and  lying  about  in 
various  places  were  several  cats  without  tails.  In  a  short  time  our 
talented  friend  made  his  appearance,  asking  the  ladies  if  they  felt  cold. 
The  youngest  replied  in  the  negative;  her  companion,  more  curious, 
wished  she  had  stated  otherwise,  as  she  hoped  they  might  have  been 
shown  into  his  sanctum  or  studio.  After  a  little  conversation  he  offered 
them  wine  and  biscuits,  which  they  partook  of  for  the  novelty,  such  an 
event  being  almost  unprecedented  in  his  house.  One  of  the  ladies  be- 

1  Turner  seems  to  have  paid  a  visit  to  the  Continent  in  1804,  as  Mr. 
Thornbury  refers  to  some  powerful  water-colour  Swiss  scenes  of  1804 
at  Farnley,  p.  240. 


HARLEY    STREET,    DEVONSHIRE,    ETC.  77 

stowing  some  notice  upon  the  cats,  he  was  induced  to  remark  that  he 
had  seven,  and  that  they  came  from  the  Isle  of  Man." ' 

Whatever  is  the  proper  date  of  this  story,  it  is  to  be 
feared  that  he  had  good  reason  for  not  wishing  persons  to 
pry  into  the  secrets  of  his  menage.  We  ourselves  have  no 
wish  to  pry  into  those  secrets ;  but  the  fact  that  Turner 
had  for  the  greater  part  of  his  life  a  home  of  which  he  was 
ashamed,  is  sufficient  to  explain  a  great  deal  of  his  want  of 
hospitality,  his  churlishness  to  visitors,  and  his  confirmed 
habits  of  secrecy  and  seclusion. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  he  habitually  lived  with  a  mis- 
tress.    Hannah  Danby,  who  entered  his  service,  a  girl  of 
sixteen,  in  the  year  1801,  and  was  his  housekeeper  in  Queen 
Anne  Street  at  his  death,  is  generally  considered  to  have 
been  one  ;  and  Sophia  Caroline  Booth,  with  whom  he  spent 
his  last  years  in  an  obscure  lodging  in  Chelsea,  another. 
There  are  many  who  have  lived  more  immoral  lives,  and 
have  done  more  harm  to  others  by  their  immorality  ;  but 
he  chose  a  kind  of  illegal  connection  which  was  particu- 
larly destructive  to  himself.     He  made  his  home  the  scene 
of  his  irregularities,  and,  by  entering  into  intimate  rela- 
tions with  uneducated  women,  cut  himself  off  from  healthy 
social  influences  which  would  have  given  daily  employment 
to   his  naturally  warm   heart,  and  prevented  him  from 
growing  into  a  selfish,  solitary  man.     Not  to  be  able  to 
enjoy  habitually  the  society  of  pure  educated  women,  not 
to  be  able  to  welcome  your  friend  to  your  hearth,  could 
not  have  been  good  for  a  man's  character,  or  his  art,  or  his 
intellect. 

His  uninterrupted  privacy  possibly  enabled  him  to  pro- 

1  There  is  no  record  of  a  visit  by  Turner  to  the  Isle  of  Man. 


78  TURNER. 

dace  more,  and  to  develop  his  genius  farther  in  one 
direction ;  but  we  could  have  well  spared  many  of  his  pic- 
tures for  a  few  works  graced  with  a  wider  culture  and  a 
healthier  sentiment.  He  could  paint,  and  paint,  perhaps, 
better  for  his  isolation — 

"  The  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land, 
The  consecration  and  the  Poet's  dream." 

But  it  would  have  been  better  for  him,  and,  we  think,  for 
his  art  also,  if  he  could  have  said  : — 

"  Farewell,  farewell,  the  heart  that  lives  alone 
Housed  in  a  dream,  at  distance  from  the  kind ! 
Such  happiness,  wherever  it  be  known, 
Is  to  be  pitied  ;  for  'tis  surely  blind."  ' 

It  was  not  from  any  scorn  of  the  conventions  of  society 
that  he  disregarded  them,  for  there  is  no  trace  of  any  feel- 
ing of  this  sort  in  his  pictures  or  his  reported  conversations, 
and  in  his  will  he  required  that  the  "Poor  and  Decayed 
Male  Artists,"  for  whom  he  intended  to  found  a  charitable 
institution  ("  Turner's  Gift"),  should  be  "  of  lawful  issue" 
One  reason  why  he  never  married  may  have  been  his  shy- 
ness and  consciousness  of  his  want  of  address  and  personal 
attraction.  Mr.  Cyrus  Bedding,  from  whom  we  have  one 
of  the  brightest  and  best  glimpses  of  Turner  as  a  man, 
says : — 

"  He  was  aware  that  he  could  not  hope  to  gain  credit  in  the  world  out 
of  his  profession.  I  believe  that  his  own  ordinary  person  was,  in  his 
clear-mindedness,  somewhat  considered  in  estimating  his  career  in  life. 
He  was  once  at  a  party  where  there  were  several  beautiful  women.  One 


1  Wordsworth's  "  Elegiac  Stanzas,"  suggested  by  a  picture  of '  Peele 
Castle  in  a  storm,'  painted  by  Sir  George  Beaumont. 


HARLET   STREET,    DEVONSHIRE,  ETC.  79 

of  them  struck  him  much  with  her  charms  and  captivating  appearance ; 
and  he  said  to  a  friend,  in  a  moment  of  unguarded  admiration,  '  If  she 
would  marry  me,  I  would  give  her  a  hundred  thousand.' " 

This,  and  the  increasing  absorption  in  his  art  of  all  of 
himself  that  could  be  so  absorbed ;  his  desire  to  economize 
both  his  time  and  his  money ;  his  innate  hatred  of  interfe- 
rence with  his  liberty  ;  his  aversion  from  undertaking  any 
obligation,  the  consequences  of  which  he  could  not  calcu- 
late— all  tended  to  keep  him  from  matrimony,  and  to  make 
him  content  with  the  most  unromantic  amours. 

That  he  in  1811  or  thereabouts  could  be  hospitable 
and  a  good  companion  away  from  home,  is  shown  by 
Mr.  Redding  in  his  pleasant  volume,  from  which  we  have 
just  quoted.  He  met  Turner  on  what  appears  to  have 
been  his  first  visit  to  the  county  to  which  his  family 
belonged — Devonshire.  He  met  him  first,  Mr.  Redding 
thinks,  at  the  house  of  Mr.  Collier  (the  father  of  Sir  Robert 
Collier),  an  eminent  merchant  of  Plymouth,  and  accom- 
panied him  on  many  excursions.  On  one  of  these  Turner 
actually  gave  a  picnic  "  in  excellent  taste  "  at  a  seat  on 
the  summit  of  the  hill,  overlooking  the  Sound  and  Caw- 
sand  Bay. 

"  Cold  meats,  shell  fish,  and  good  wines  were  provided  on  that  delight- 
ful and  unrivalled  spot.  Our  host  was  agreeable,  but  terse,  blunt,  and 
almost  epigrammatic  at  times.  Never  given  to  waste  his  words,  nor 
remarkably  choice  in  their  arrangement,  they  were  always  in  their  right 
place,  and  admirably  effective." 

This  last  sentence  sounds  somewhat  paradoxical,  but  for 
that  reason  is  probably  all  the  more  accurately  descriptive 
of  Turner's  art  in  words.  Further  on,  when  defending 

1  "  Past  Celebrities,"  by  Cyrus  Redding,  vol.  i. 


80  TURNER. 

the  great  painter,  we  get  a  portrait  of  him  as  a  "  plain 
figure  "  with  "  somewhat  bandy  legs,"  and  "  dingy  com- 
plexion." On  another  excursion,  Redding  spent  a  night  at 
a  small  country  inn  with  Turner,  about  three  miles  from 
Tavistock,  as  the  artist  had  a  great  desire  to  see  the 
country  round  at  sunrise.  The  rest  of  the  party,  Mr. 
Collier  and  two  friends,  who  had  spent  the  day  with  them 
on  the  shores  of  the  Tamar  with  a  scanty  supply  of  pro- 
visions, preferred  to  pass  the  night  at  Tavistock. 

"  Turner  was  content  with  bread  and  cheese  and  beer,  tolerably  good, 
for  dinner  and  supper  in  one.  I  contrived  to  feast  somewhat  less  simply 
on  bacon  and  eggs,  through  an  afterthought  inspiration.  In  the  little 
sanded  room  we  conversed  by  the  light  of  an  attenuated  candle,  and 
some  aid  from  the  moon,  until  nearly  midnight,  when  Turner  laid  his 
head  upon  the  table,  and  was  soon  sound  asleep.  I  placed  two  or  three 
chairs  in  a  line,  and  followed  his  example  at  full  recumbency.  In  this 
way  three  or  four  hours'  rest  were  (sic)  obtained,  and  we  were  both 
fresh  enough  to  go  out,  as  soon  as  the  sun  was  up,  to  explore  the  scenery 
in  the  neighbourhood,  and  get  a  humble  breakfast,  before  our  friends 
rejoined  us  from  Tavistock.  It  was  in  that  early  morning  Turner  made 
a  sketch  of  the  picture  ( Crossing  the  Brook)  to  which  I  have  alluded,  and 
which  he  invited  me  to  his  gallery  to  see." 

Another  of  these  excursions  was  to  Burr  or  Borough 
Island,  in  Bigbury  Bay,  "  To  eat  hot  lobsters  fresh  from 
the  sea." 

"  The  morning  was  squally,  and  the  sea  rolled  boisterously  into  the 
Sound.  As  we  ran  out,  the  sea  continued  to  rise,  and  off  Stake's  point 
became  stormy.  Our  Dutch  boat  rode  bravely  over  the  furrows,  which 
in  that  low  part  of  the  Channel  roll  grandly  in  unbroken  ridges  from 
the  Atlantic." 

Two  of  the  party  were  ill ;  one,  an  officer  in  the  army, 
wanted  to  throw  himself  overboard,  and  they  "were 
obliged  to  keep  him  down  among  the  rusty  iron  ballast, 
with  a  spar  across  him." 


o  .2 


82  TURNER. 

"  Turner  was  all  the  while  quiet,  watching  the  troubled  scene,  and  it 
was  not  unworthy  his  notice.  The  island,  the  solitary  hut  upon  it,  the 
bay  in  the  bight  of  which  it  lay,  and  the  long  gloomy  Bolt  Head  to  sea- 
ward, against  which  the  waves  broke  with  fury,  seemed  to  absorb  the 
entire  notice  of  the  artist,  who  scarcely  spoke  a  syllable.  While  the  fish 
were  getting  ready,  Turner  mounted  nearly  to  the  highest  point  of  the 
island  rock,  and  seemed  writing  rather  than  drawing.  The  wind  was 
almost  too  violent  for  either  purpose ;  what  he  particularly  noted  he 
did  not  say." 

These  reminiscences  of  Mr.  Redding  contain  the  most 
graphic  picture  of  Turner  we  possess.  His  carelessness 
of  comfort,  his  devotion  to  his  art,  his  power  of  continuous 
observation  in  despite  of  tumult  and  discomfort,  his  love 
of  the  sun  and  the  sea,  his  habit  of  sketching  from  a  high 
point  of  view,  his  ability  to  take  "  pictorial  memoranda  " 
in  a  violent  wind,  are  all  striking  and  essential  pecu- 
liarities. 

It  is  interesting  to  learn  also  from  Mr.  Redding,  that 
"  early  in  the  morning  before  the  rest  were  up,  Turner 
and  myself  walked  to  Dodbrooke,  hard  by  the  town,  to 
see  the  house  that  had  belonged  to  Dr.  Walcot  (sic), 
Peter  Pindar,  and  where  he  was  born.  Walcot  sold  it, 
and  there  had  been  a  house  erected  there  since ;  of  this  the 
artist  took  a  sketch."  Turner  probably  appreciated  Peter's 
"  Advice  to  Landscape  Painters." 

One  piece  of  Turner's  conversation  is  also  worthy  of 
record,  if  only  on  account  of  its  rarity. 

"  He  was  looking  at  a  seventy-four  gun  ship,  which  lay  in  the  shadow 
under  Saltash.  The  ship  seemed  one  dark  mass. 

" '  I  told  you  that  would  be  the  effect,'  said  Turner,  referring  to  some 
previous  conversation.  '  Now,  as  you  observe,  it  is  all  shade.' 

"  '  Yes,  I  perceive  it ;  and  yet  the  ports  are  there.' 

" '  We  can  only  take  what  is  visible — no  matter  what  may  be  there. 
There  are  people  in  the  ship ;  we  don't  see  them  through  the  planks.'  " 


HARLEY  STREET,  DEVONSHIRE,    ETC.  83 

This  reads  like  a  speech  of  Dr.  Johnson. 

We  have  another  account  of  this  same  visit  to  Devon- 
shire from  Sir  Charles  Eastlake,  which  bears  testimony  to 
the  hospitality  which  he  received.  Miss  Pearce,  an  aunt  of 
Sir  Charles,  appears  to  have  been  his  hostess,  and  her 
cottage  at  Calstock  the  centre  of  his  excursions.  A  land- 
scape painter,  Mr.  Ambrose  Johns,  of  great  merit,  accord- 
ing to  Sir  Charles,  fitted  up  a  small  portable  painting  box, 
which  was  of  much  use  to  Turner  in  affording  him  ready 
appliances  for  sketching  in  oil. 

"  Turner  seemed  pleased  when  the  rapidity  with  which  these  sketches 
were  done  was  talked  of ;  for  departing  from  his  habitual  reserve  in  the 
instance  of  his  pencil  sketches,  he  made  no  difficulty  in  showing  them. 
On  one  occasion,  when,  on  his  return  after  a  sketching  ramble  to  a 
country  residence  belonging  to  my  father,  near  Plympton,  the  day's 
work  was  shown,  he  himself  remarked  that  one  of  the  sketches  (and 
perhaps  the  best)  was  done  in  less  than  half  an  hour.  ....  On 
my  inquiring  what  had  become  of  these  sketches,  Turner  replied  that 
they  were  worthless,  in  consequence,  as  he  supposed,  of  some  defects  in 
the  preparation  of  the  paper  ;  all  the  grey  tints,  he  observed,  had  nearly 
disappeared.  Although  I  did  not  implicitly  rely  on  that  statement,  I 
do  not  remember  to  have  seen  any  of  them  afterwards."  ' 

Mr.  Johns's  devotion  was  not  rewarded  till  long  after- 
wards, when  the  great  painter  sent  him  a  small  oil  sketch 
in  a  letter.  Mr.  Redding  obtained  at  the  time  a  rough 
sketch,  and  these  seem  to  have  been  the  only  returns  he 
made  for  the  kindness  that  was  shown  to  him  at  Ply- 
mouth, though  many  years  afterwards  he  spoke  to  Mr. 
Redding  "  of  the  reception  he  met  with  on  this  tour,  in  a 
strain  that  exhibited  his  possession  of  a  mind  not  unsuscep- 
tible or  forgetful  of  kindness." 

The  date  of  this  tour  is  given  by  Mr.  Redding  as  pro- 

1  Thornbury,  p.  152. 


84  TURNER. 

bably  1811,  and  by  Eastlake  1813  or  1814.  The  principal 
pictorial  results  of  it  were  Crossing  the  Brook  (exhibited  in 
1815),  and  various  drawings  for  Cooke's  Southern  Coast, 
which  commenced  in  1814.  It  seems  probable  that  his 
engagement  on  this  work  determined  his  visit  to  Cornwall 
and  Devonshire,  but  this  is  uncertain,  as  is  also  whether  he 
paid  more  than  one  visit  to  the  locality. 

This  tour  is  also  interesting  from  its  being  the  only 
occasion  on  which  Turner  is  known  to  have  visited  his 
kinsfolk.  We  are  enabled  to  state  on  the  authority  of  one 
of  his  family  that  he  went  to  Barnstaple  and  called  upon 
his  relations  there,  and  a  gentleman,  late  of  the  Chancery 
Bar,  has  kindly  supplied  us  with  the  following  extract  of 
a  memorandum  made  by  him  in  1853,  from  facts  sworn  to 
in  suits  instituted  to  administer  Turner's  estate. 

"  Price  Turner,  an  uncle  of  the  painter's,  having  some  idea  of  edu- 
cating his  son,  Thomas  Price  Turner  (now  (1853)  living  at  North  Street, 
in  the  parish  of  St.  Kerrian,  Exeter,  Professor  of  Music)  as  a  painter, 
T.  P.  T.  made,  at  the  request  of  William  Turner,  the  great  artist's 
father,  two  drawings  as  specimens  of  his  ability,  one  a  view  of  the  city 
of  Exeter,  taken  from  the  south  side,  and  the  other  a  view  of  Kouge- 
mont  Castle,  and  sent  them  by  Wm.  Turner  to  his  son.  Shortly  after, 
he  (T.  P.  T.)  received  a  number  of  water  colour  drawings,  sketches,  &c. 
Some  of  these  were  afterwards  sent  for  again,  one  of  which,  a  water 
colour  view  of  Redcliffe  Church,  Bristol,  Thomas  Price  Turner  pre- 
viously copied,  which  copy,  together  with  the  residue  of  Turner's  draw- 
ings, are  still  in  his  cousin's  possession. 

"  J.  M.  W.  Turner  called  at  Price  Turner's  house  at  Exeter  about  forty 
years  ago  (about  1813),  and,  saying  that  he  called  at  his  father's  re- 
quest, had  a  conversation  with  Price  Turner  and  his  son  and  daughter. 
Thomas  Price  Turner  went  to  London  in  1834  to  attend  the  Royal 
Musical  Festival  in  commemoration  of  Handel,  in  which  he  was  engaged 
as  a  chorus  singer.  He  called  three  times  on  his  cousin,  and  the  third 
time  saw  him,  but  though  he  (J.  M.  W.  T.)  immediately  recognized 
him,  the  painter  gave  him  a  cool  reception,  never  so  much  as  asking  him 
to  sit  down." 


HARLEY    STREET,   DEVONSHIRE,  ETC.  85 

It  is  probable  that  Turner's  father  removed  with  him  to 
Harley  Street  in  1800.  The  powder  tax  of  1795  is  said  to 
have  destroyed  his  trade,  and  he  lived  with  his  son  till  he 
died  in  1830.  He  used  to  strain  his  son's  canvasses  and 
varnish  his  pictures,  "which  made  Turner  say  that  his 
father  began  and  finished  his  pictures  for  him."  As  early 
as  1809,  Turner  "  was  in  the  habit  of  privately  exhibiting 
such  pictures  as  he  did  not  sell,  and  the  small  accumula- 
tion he  had  at  Harley  Street  in  1809  was  already  dignified 
with  the  name  of  the  "  Turner  Gallery." 1  This  gallery 
Turner's  father  attended  to,  showing  in  visitors  &c.,  and 
when  they  stayed  at  Twickenham  he  came  up  to  town 
every  morning  to  open  it.  Thornbury  says  that  the  cost 
of  this  weighed  upon  his  spirits  until  he  made  friends  with, 
a  market-gardener,  who  for  a  glass  of  gin  a-day,  brought 
him  up  in  his  cart  on  the  top  of  the  vegetables.  This  is 
said  to  have  been  after  Turner  removed  from  Harley  Street, 
and  was  very  well  off  if  not  rich,  for  he  had  built  his  house 
in  Queen  Anne  Street  and  his  lodge  at  Twickenham,2  both 
of  which  belonged  to  him,  as  well  as  the  land  at  Twicken- 
ham, and  (probably)  the  house  in  Harley  Street.  Turner's 
father  made  great  exertions  to  add  to  his  son's  estate  at 
Sandycombe,  by  running  out  little  earthworks  in  the  road 
and  then  fencing  them  round.  At  one  time  there  was  a 
regular  row  of  these  fortifications,  which  used  to  be  called 
"Turner's  Cribs."  One  day,  however,  they  were  ruth- 
lessly swept  away  by  some  local  authority.  If,  how- 
ever, both  father  and  son  were  very  "  saving "  and 


1  See  Wornum, "  Turner  Gallery,"  p.  xv.,  for  a  Catalogue  of  Turner's 
Gallery  in  1809. 
1  He  is  said  to  hare  been  his  own  architect  for  both  houses. 


86  TURNER, 

eccentric  in  their  ways,  they  were  devoted  to  one  another 
from  the  beginning  to  the  end,  to  an  extent  very  touch- 
ing and  beautiful,  however  strange  in  its  manifestation. 

Of  Turner's  life  at  West  End,  Upper  Mall,  Hammersmith, 
we  have  only  the  following  glimpse  in  a  communication  to 
Thornbury  by  "  a  friend." 

"  The  garden,  which  ran  down  to  the  river,  terminated  in  a  summer- 
house  ;  and  here,  out  in  the  open  air,  were  painted  some  of  his  best 
pictures.  It  was  there  that  my  father,  who  then  resided  at  Kew,  became 
first  acquainted  with  him$  and  expressing  his  surprise  that  Turner 
could  paint  under  such  circumstances,  he  remarked  that  lights  and  room 
were  absurdities,  and  that  a  picture  could  be  painted  anywhere.  His 
eyes  were  remarkably  strong.  He  would  throw  down  his  water-colour 
drawings  on  the  floor  of  the  summer-house,  requesting  my  father  not  to 
touch  them,  as  he  could  see  them  there,  and  they  would  be  drying  at 
the  same  time." 

It  may  have  been  when  at  Hammersmith  that  he  became 
acquainted  with  Mr.  Trimmer,  for  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  Wyatfc 
of  Oxford  respecting  two  pictures  of  that  city,  which  is  dated 
"West  End,  Upper  Mall,  Hammersmith,  Feb.  4,  1810," 
he  says,  "  Pray  tell  me  likewise  of  a  gentleman  of  the  name 
of  Trimmer,  who  has  written  to  you  to  be  a  subscriber  for 
the  print."  This  gentleman  was  the  Rev.  Henry  Scott 
Trimmer,  Vicar  of  Heston,  who  was  one  of  Turner's  best  and 
most  intimate  friends  till  his  death.  It  is  said  that  he  first 
went  to  Hammersmith  to  be  near  De  Loutherbourg,  and  it 
is  probable  that  one  of  his  reasons  for  building  on  his  free- 
hold at  Twickenham  was  to  be  nearer  Mr.  Trimmer.  De 
Loutherbourg  died  in  1812. 

Sandycombe  Lodge,  first  called  Solus  Lodge,  is  on  the 
road  from  Twickenham  to  Isleworth,  and  is  built  on  low 
lying  ground  and  damp.  The  original  structure  has  been 
added  to,  but  the  additions  being  built  of  brick,  it  is  easy 


HARLEY  STREET,   DEVONSHIRE,  ETC.  87 

to  see  how  it  looked  in  Turner's  time — a  small  semi-Italian 
villa  covered  with  plaster  and  decorated  with  iron  balus- 
trades and  steps.  It  is  within  walking  distance  (4  miles) 
of  Heston.  We  are  able  by  the  kindness  of  Mr.  F.  E. 
Trimmer,  the  youngest  son  of  Turner's  friend,  to  correct 
some  false  impressions  conveyed  by  Thornbury's  garbled 
account  of  what  he  was  told  by  the  eldest  son. 

The  Rev.  Henry  Scott  Trimmer,  the  son  of  the  celebrated 
Mrs.  Trimmer,  and  father  of  the  Rev.  Henry  Syer  Trimmer, 
who  gave  Thornbury  his  information,  was  about  the  same 
age  as  Turner,  and  very  much  interested  in  art.  As  an 
amateur  painter  he  attained  considerable  skill,  having  a 
wonderful  faculty  for  catching  the  manner  of  other  artists. 
His  great  knowledge  of  pictures,  and  his  continual  experi- 
ments in  the  way  of  mediums,  colours,  and  devices  for  ob- 
taining effects,  made  his  acquaintance  specially  interesting 
and  valuable  to  Turner,  and  Turner's  to  him.  No  betterproof 
of  his  ability  can  be  found  than  the  two  following  stories  : — 

There  is  a  picture  at  Heston  before  which  Turner  would 
frequently  stand  studying.  It  is  a  sea-piece  with  the  sun 
behind  a  mist,  and  with  a  golden  hazy  effect  not  unlike 
Turner's  famous  Sun  rising  in  a  Mist,  but  the  sea  washes 
up  to  the  frame.  One  day  Turner  said  to  Mr.  Trimmer, 
"  I  like  that  picture ;  there's  a  good  deal  in  it.  Where  did 
you  get  it  ?  "  (Or  words  to  this  effect.)  "  I  painted  it," 
was  the  reply ;  upon  which  the  artist  turned  away  with- 
out a  word,  and  never  looked' at  the  picture  again. 

The  true  story  of  the  picture,  supposed  to  be  by  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds,  to  which  Mr.  Trimmer  added  a  back- 
ground, is  this.1  He  purchased  it  in  an  unfinished  condition 

1  See  Thornbuiy,  p.  224. 


88  TURNER. 

of  a  dealer  in  Holborn,  and  finished  it  himself,  and  it  re- 
mained in  his  possession  till  his  death,  when  his  son  (Mr. 
F.  E.  Trimmer),  knowing  its  history,  kept  it  out  of  the  sale 
at  Christie's  of  his  father's  fine  collection,  and  sold  it, 
among  other  less  valuable  and  genuine  productions,  at  Hes- 
ton. The  dealer  who  bought  it  (for  £6)  thought  he  had 
made  a  great  catch,  and  inquired  of  Mr.  Trimmer's  son  the 
history  of  the  picture,  which  he  considered  a  splendid  Sir 
Joshua,  speaking  especially  of  the  background  as  being  a 
proof  of  its  authenticity.  When  Mr.  Trimmer  told  him  that 
his  father  had  bought  it  in  his  own  shop  and  had  finished 
it  himself,  he  would  not  believe  it  for  a  long  time. 

Of  the  other  stories  of  Turner's  connection  with  Heston, 
and  of  his  power  to  assist  others  in  the  composition  of 
their  pictures,  the  following  is  perhaps  the  most  inte- 
resting : — l 

Once  when  Howard  (B.  A.)  was  staying  at  the  vicarage, 
painting  a  portrait  of  Mr.  Trimmer's  second  son,  the  Bev. 
Barrington  James  Trimmer,  Turner  was  always  finding 
fault  with  the  work  in  progress.  It  was  a  full-size  and 
full-length  portrait  of  a  boy  of  three  years  old,  dressed  in 
a  white  frock  and  red  morocco  shoes.  One  day  Howard, 
annoyed  at  Turner's  frequent  objections,  told  him  that  he 
had  better  do  it  himself,  on  which  Turner  said, "  This  is  what 
I  should  do,"  and  taking  up  the  cat  he  wrapped  its  body  in 
his  red  pocket  handkerchief,  and  put  it  under  the  boy's  arm. 
The  effect  of  this,  as  may  still  be  seen  in  the  picture  at  the 
house  of  Mr.  Trimmer's  son  at  Heston,  was  excellent.  The 
cat  gave  an  interest  to  the  figure  which  it  wanted,  the  red 
morocco  shoes  were  no  longer  isolated  patches  of  bright 

1  See  Thornbury,  p.  223. 


HARLEY  STREET,   DEVONSHIRE,  ETC.  89 

colour  at  the  bottom  of  the  picture,  the  blank  expanse  of 
white  frock  was  varied  and  lightened  up  by  the  red  hand- 
kerchief and  pussy's  tabby  face,  and  the  work,  which  was 
on  the  brink  of  failure,  was  a  decided  success.  Parts  of  the 
cat,  handkerchief,  and  landscape  were  put  in  by  Turner. 

Sketching  with  oils  on  a  large  canvas  in  a  boat,  driving 
out  on  little  sketching  excursions  in  his  gig  with  his  ill- 
tempered  nag  Crop  Ear,  said  to  have  been  immortalized  in 
his  picture  of  the  Frosty  Morning  (which  was,  however, 
painted  before  he  went  to  Twickenham),  fishing  for  trout  in 
the  Old  Brent,  or  for  roach  in  the  Thames,  with  Mr.  Trim- 
mer's sons,  digging  his  pond  in  his  garden  and  planting  it 
round  with  weeping  willows  and  alders,  the  picture  of 
Turner's  life  at  Twickenham  is  a  pleasant  and  healthy  one. 
At  Heston  he  drew  his  Interior  of  a  Church  for  the  "  Liber," 
and  actually  gave  away  two  of  his  drawings  to  Mrs.  Trim- 
mer, one  of  a  Gainsborough,  which  they  had  seen  together 
on  an  excursion  to  Osterley  House,  and  one  of  a  woman 
gathering  watercresses,  whom  they  had  met  on  their  way. 
But  these  gifts  were  asked  for  by  the  lady,  and  Turner 
would  not  let  them  go  without  making  replicas.  He 
once  stood  with  a  long  rod  two  whole  days  in  a  pouring 
rain  under  an  umbrella  fishing  in  a  small  pond  in  the 
vicarage  garden,  without  even  a  nibble. 

In  connection  with  the  Trimmers  we  get  other  instances 
of  his  rare  and  bare  hospitality,  which  showed  that  he 
never  altered  his  manner  of  living  after  he  left  Maiden 
Lane.  We  must  refer  the  reader  *to  Mr.  Thornbury's  life 
for  the  remainder  of  these  varied,  interesting,  and  on  the 
whole  pleasant  reminiscences. 

Space,  however,  we  must  spare  for  a  letter,  very  in- 
correctly given  by  Thornbury,  the  only  record  of  his  second 


90  TURNER. 

attachment,  the  object  of  which  was  the  sister  of  the  Rev. 
H.  Scott  Trimmer,  who  was  at  that  time  being  courted  by 
her  future  husband  : — 

"  Tttesday.  Aug.  1.  1815. 

"  QUKEN  ANNE  ST. 
"  MY  DEAR  SIR, 

"  I  lament  that  all  hope  of  the  pleasure  of  seeing  you  or  getting 
to  Heston — must  for  the  present  wholly  vanish.  My  father  told  me  on 
Saturday  last  when  I  was  as  usual  compelled  to  return  to  town  the  same 
day,  that  you  and  Mrs.  Trimmer  would  leave  Heston  for  Suffolk  as 
tomorrow  Wednesday,  in  the  first  place,  I  am  glad  to  hear  that  her 
health  is  so  far  established  as  to  be  equal  to  the  journey,  and  believe  me 
your  utmost  hope,  for  her  benefitting  by  the  sea  afar  being  fully  realized 
will  give  me  great  pleasure  to  hear,  and  the  earlier  the  better. 

"  After  next  Tuesday — if  yon  have  a  moments  time  to  spare,  a  line 
will  reach  me  at  Farnley  Hall,  near  Otley  Yorkshire,  and  for  some  time, 
as  Mr.  Fawkes  talks  of  keeping  me  in  the  north  by  a  trip  to  the  Lakes 
&c.  until  November  therefore  I  suspect  I  am  not  to  see  Sandycombe. 
Sandycombe  sounds  just  now  in  my  ears  as  an  act  of  folly,  when  I 
reflect  how  little  I  have  been  able  to  be  there  this  year,  and  less  chance 
(perhaps)  for  the  next  in  looking  forward  to  a  Continental  excursion, 
&  poor  Daddy  seems  as  much  plagued  with  weeds  as  I  am  with  dis- 

apointments,  that  if  Miss would  but  wave  bashfulness,  or — in  other 

words — make  an  offer  instead  of  expecting  one — the  same  might  change 
occupiers — but  not  to  teaze  3*011  further,  allow  with  most  sincere  respects 
to  Mrs.  Trimmer  and  family,  to  consider  myself 

"  Your  most  truly  (or  sincerely)  obliged 

"  J.  M.  W.  TURNER." 

But  for  the  assurance  of  the  present  Mr.  Trimmer,  of 
Heston,  that  this  attachment  of  Turner  to  Miss  Trimmer 
was  undoubted,  and  that  this  letter  has  always  been  con- 
sidered in  the  family  as  a  declaration  thereof,  we  should  have 
thought  that  the  offer  he  wanted  was  one  for  Sandycombe 
Lodge  and  not  for  his  hand.  It  is,  however,  past  doubt 
that  Turner  was  violently  smitten,  and  though  forty  years 
old,  felt  it  much. 


HARLET   STREET,  DEVONSHIRE,   ETC.  91 

The  above  letter  was  the  only  one  known  to  have  been 
written  by  Turner  to  his  friend  the  Vicar  of  Heston,  and 
it  is  quite  untrue,  as  asserted  by  Thornbury,  that  the 
Vicar's  letters  were  burnt  in  sackfuls  by  his  son.  His 
large  correspondence  was  patiently  gone  through — a  task 
which  took  some  years.  Thornbury  was  probably  think- 
ing of  the  destruction  of  the  celebrated  Mrs.  Trimmer's 
correspondence  by  her  daughter,  in  which  it  is  true  that 
sackfuls  of  interesting  letters  perished. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

ITALY     AND     FRANCE, 
1820   TO    1840. 

THE  life  of  Turner  the  man,  that  is,  what  we  know 
of  it,  during  these  twenty  years,  may  be  written 
almost  in  a  page — the  history  of  his  art  might  be  made 
to  fill  many  volumes.  During  this  period  he  exhibited 
nearly  eighty  pictures  at  the  Royal  Academy,  and  about 
five  hundred  engravings  were  published  from  his  draw- 
ings. If  he  had  been  famous  before,  he  was  something 
else,  if  not  something  more  than  famous  now ;  he  was  "  the 
fashion."  It  was  on  this  ground  that  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
who  would  have  preferred  Thomson  of  Duddingstone  to 
illustrate  his  '  Provincial  Antiquities  '  (published  in  1826), 
agreed  to  the  employment  of  Turner,  who  afterwards  (in 
1834)  furnished  a  beautiful  series  of  sixty-five  vignettes 
for  Cadell's  edition  of  Sir  Walter's  prose  and  poetical 
works. 

In  1819  Turner  paid  his  first  visit  to  Italy,  which  had 
a  marked  influence  on  his  style.  From  this  time  forward 
his  works  become  remarkable  for  their  colour.  Down  to 
this  time  he  had  painted  principally  in  browns,  blues, 


ITALY   AND   FRANCE.  93 

and  greys,  employing  red  and  yellow  very  sparingly,  but 
he  had  been  gradually  warming  his  scale  almost  from  the 
beginning.  From  the  wash  of  sepia  and  Prussian  blue, 
he  had  slowly  proceeded  in  the  direction  of  golden  and 
reddish  brown,  and  had  produced  both  drawings  and  pic- 
tures with  wonderful  effects  of  mist  and  sunlight,  but  he 
had  scarcely  gone  beyond  the  sober  colouring  of  Vande- 
velde  and  Euysdael  till  he  began  his  great  pictures  in 
rivalry  with  Claude.  In  them  may  be  seen  perhaps  the 
dawn  of  the  new  power  in  his  art.  In  the  Exhibition  of 
1815  were  two  prophecies  of  his  new  style,  in  which  he 
was  to  transcend  all  former  efforts  in  the  painting  of 
distance  and  in  colour.  These  were  Crossing  the  Brook, 
with  its  magical  distance,  and  Dido  building  Carthage,  with 
its  blazing  sky  and  brilliant  feathery  clouds.  The  first 
is  the  purest  and  most  beautiful  of  all  his  oil  pictures 
of  the  loveliness  of  English  scenery,  the  most  simple 
in  its  motive,  the  most  tranquil  in  its  sentiment,  the  per- 
fect expression  of  his  enjoyment  of  the  exquisite  scenery 
in  the  neighbourhood  of  Plymouth.  The  latter  with  all 
its  faults  was  the  finest  of  the  kind  he  ever  painted,  and 
his  greatest  effect  in  the  way  of  colour  before  his  visit  to 
Italy.  In  his  other  Carthage  picture  of  this  period,  The 
Decline  (exhibited  1817),  the  "brown  demon,"  as  Mr. 
Ruskin  calls  it,  was  in  full  force,  and  his  pictures  of  Dido 
andJEneas  (1814),  Tlie  Temple  of  Jupiter  (1817),  and  Apu- 
leia  and  Apuleius,  are  cold  and  heavy  in  comparison.  In- 
deed, from  1815  to  1823  his  power,  judged  by  his  exhibited 
pictures,  seemed  to  be  flagging.  Whether  his  second  dis- 
appointment in  love  had  anything  to  do  with  this  we  have 
no  means  of  judging,  but  if  it  disturbed  for  a  time  his 
power  of  painting  for  fame,  it  certainly  had  no  ill  effect 


94  TURNER. 

either  as  to  the  quantity  or  quality  of  his  water-colours 
for  the  engravers. 

His  most  worthy  and  beautiful  work  of  these  years  is 
to  be  found  not  in  his  oil  pictures  but  in  his  drawings  for 
Dr.  Whitaker's  '  History  of  Bichmondshire '  (published 
1823)  and  the  '  Rivers  of  England  '  (1824).  Both  series 
were  engraved  in  line  in  a  manner  worthy  of  the  artist. 
One  of  the  former,  the  Hornby  Castle,  a  little  faded  per- 
haps, but  still  exquisite  in  its  harmonies  of  blue  and  amber, 
is  to  be  seen  at  South  Kensington.  Three  more  were 
lately  exhibited  by  Mr.  Buskin — Heysliam  Village,  Egglestone 
Abbey,  and  Richmond.  Of  this  series  Mr.  Buskin  says, 
"  The  foliage  is  rich  and  marvellous  in  composition,  the 
effects  of  mist  more  varied  and  true  "  (than  in  the  Hake- 
will  drawings),  "  the  rock  and  hill  drawing  insuperable, 
the  skies  exquisite  in  complex  form."  The  engravings  pro- 
bably owed  much  to  Turner's  own  supervision,  and  many 
of  them,  such  as  Egglestone  Abbey,  by  T.  Higham,  and 
Wydiffe,  by  John  Pye,  Middiman's  Moss  Dale  Fall,  and 
Badcliffe's  Hornby  Castle,  were  perfect  translations  of  the 
originals,  showing  an  advance  in  the  art  of  engraving  as 
great  as  that  which  Turner  had  made  in  water-colour 
drawing.  Except  in  the  heightened  scale  of  colour  there 
is  little  in  this  series  to  show  the  influence  of  Italy,  their 
temper  is  that  of  Crossing  the  Brook,  and  the  foliage  and 
scenery  that  of  England.  Nor  do  we  find  anything  but  Eng- 
land in  the  '  Bivers.'  Nothing  can  be  more  purely  English 
than  the  exquisite  drawing  of  Totnes  on  the  Dart  (of  which 
we  give  a  woodcut).  The  original  is  one  of  the  treasures 
of  the  National  Gallery,  and  is  marvellous  for  the  minute- 
ness of  its  finish  and  the  breadth  and  truth  of  its  effect. 
The  tiny  group  of  poplars  in  the  middle  distance  are 


*  § 

-!  •§ 

Q     §> 


96  TURNER. 

painted  with  such  dexterity  that  the  impression  of  mul- 
titudinous leafage  is  perfectly  conveyed,  and  the  stillness 
of  clear  smooth  water  filled  with  innumerable  variegated 
reflections,  the  beautiful  distance  with  castle,  church,  and 
town,  and  the  group  of  gulls  in  the  foreground,  make  a 
picture  of  placid  beauty  in  which  there  is  no  straining 
for  effect,  no  mannerism,  nothing  to  remind  you  of  the 
artist.  It  is  only  in  the  touches  of  red  in  the  fore  of  the 
river  (touches  unaccounted  for  by  anything  in  the  draw- 
ing) that  you  discern  him  at  last,  and  find  that  you  are 
looking  not  at  nature  but  "a  Turner."  If  you  are  inclined 
to  be  angry  with  these  touches,  cover  them  with  the  hand 
and  find  out  how  much  of  the  charm  is  lost. 

After  the  '  Rivers  of  England,'  Turner  produced  work 
more  magnificent  in  colour,  more  transcendent  in  imagina- 
tion, indeed  the  work  which  singles  him  out  individually 
from  all  landscape  artists,  in  which  the  essences  of  the 
material  world  were  revealed  in  a  manner  which  was  not 
only  unrealized  but  unconceived  before ;  but  for  perfect 
balance  of  power,  for  the  mirroring  of  nature  as  it  appears 
to  ninety -nine  out  of  every  hundred,  for  fidelity  of  colour  of 
both  sky  and  earth,  and  form  (especially  of  trees),  for  care- 
fulness and  accuracy  of  drawing,  for  work  that  neither 
startles  you  by  its  eccentricity  nor  puzzles  you  as  to  its 
meaning,  which  satisfies  without  cloying,  and  leaves  no 
doubt  as  to  the  truth  of  its  illusion,  there  is  none  to  com- 
pare with  these  drawings  of  his  of  England  after  his  first 
visit  to  Italy — and  especially  (though  perhaps  it  is  be- 
cause we  know  them  best  that  we  say  so)  the  drawings 
for  the  '  Rivers  of  England.'  We  are  certain  at  least  of 
this,  that  no  one  has  a  right  to  form  an  opinion  about 
Turner's  power  generally,  either  to  go  into  ecstasies  over 


ITALY  AND   FRANCE.  97 

or  to  deride  his  later  work,  till  he  has  seen  some  of  these 
matchless  drawings.  They  form  the  true  centre  of  his 
artistic  life,  the  point  at  which  his  desire  for  the  simple 
truth  and  the  imperious  demands  of  his  imagination  were 
most  nearly  balanced. 

In  1821  and  1824  Turner  exhibited  no  pictures  at  the 
Royal  Academy,  and  it  would  have  been  no  loss  to  his 
fame  if  his  pictures  of  1820  and  1822,  Rome,  from  the 
Vatican,  and  What  you  will,  had  never  left  his  studio;  but 
in  1823  he  astonished  the  world  with  the  first  of  those  mag- 
nificent dreams  of  landscape  loveliness  with  which  his  name 
will  always  be  specially  associated ; — The  Bay  of  Baiae  with 
Apollo  and  the  Sibyl  (1823).  The  three  supreme  works  of 
this  class,  The  Bay  of  Baicn,  Caligula's  Palace  and  Bridye 
(1831),  and  Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage  (1832),  are  too  well 
known  to  need  description,  and  have  been  too  much  written 
about  to  need  much  comment.  They  were  the  realization 
of  his  impressions  of  Italy,  with  its  sunny  skies,  its  stone- 
pines,  its  rums,  its  luxuriance  of  vegetation,  its  heritage 
of  romance.  How  little  the  names  given  to  these  pictures 
really  influence  their  effect,  is  shown  by  the  frequency 
with  which  one  of  them  is  confused  with  another. 
What  verses  of  what  poet,  what  episode  of  history  may 
have  been  in  the  artist's  mind  is  of  little  consequence, 
when  the  thought  is  expressed  in  the  same  terms  of  infinite 
sunny  distance,  crumbling  ruin  and  towering  tree.  The 
artist  may  have  meant  to  embody  the  whole  of  Byron's 
mind  in  the  Childe  Harold,  the  history  of  Italy  in  Caligula's 
Palace  and  Bridge,  the  folly  of  life  in  Apollo  and  the  Sibyl, 
but  it  does  not  matter  now,  the  things  are  "  Turners," 
neither  more  nor  less  ;  we  doubt  very  much  whether 
Turner  cared  greatly  for  the  particular  stories  attached 

H 


98  TURNER. 

to  many  of  his  pictures.  Some  of  them  remind  us  of  a 
title  of  a  picture  in  the  Academy  of  1808,  A  Temple  and 
Portico,  with  the  drowning  of  Aristobulus,  vide  Josephus, 
book  15,  chap.  3.  In  some  it  was  no  doubt  his  ardent 
desire  to  proclaim  his  thoughts  on  history  and  fate, 
but  the  result  is  much  the  same,  for  the  medium  in 
which  he  attempted  to  convey  them  was  that  least  suited 
for  his  purpose.  It  was,  however,  his  only  means  of  ex- 
pression, and  there  is  something  very  sad  in  the  idea  of 
a  mind  struggling1  in  vain  to  give  its  most  serious  thoughts 
didactic  force.  If  these  thoughts  had  been  profound,  and 
the  mind  that  of  a  prophet,  the  failure  would  have  been 
tragical.  The  language  employed  was  the  highest  of  its 
kind,  but  it  was  as  inadequate  for  its  purpose  as  music.  It 
has,  however,  like  fine  music,  the  power  of  starting  vibra- 
tions of  sentiment  full  of  suggestion,  giving  birth  to  end- 
less dreams  of  beauty  and  pleasure,  of  sadness  and  fore- 
boding, according  to  the  personality  and  humour  of  those 
who  are  sensitive  to  its  charm. 

In  1825  were  published  his  first  illustrations  to  a 
modern  poet — Byron ;  he  contributed  some  more  to  the 
editions  of  1833  and  1834,  most  of  them  being  views  of 
places  which  he  had  never  seen,  and  therefore  compo- 
sitions from  the  sketches  of  others,  like  his  drawings 
for  Hakewill's  "Picturesque  Tour  of  Italy"  and  Finden's 
"  Illustrations  of  the  Bible."  No  doubt  the  experience  of 
his  youth  in  improving  the  sketches  of  amateurs  and  the 
liberty  which  such  work  gave  to  his  imagination,  made  it 
easy  and  congenial  to  him.  These  drawings  show  the 
variety  of  his  artistic  power  and  the  perfection  of  his 
technical  skill.  The  HaJceivill  series  is  marvellous  for 
minute  accuracy  (being  taken  from  camera  sketches) 


ITALY   AND   FRANCE.  99 

and  for  beautiful  tree  drawing,  and  the  Bible  series 
for  imagination.  They  are,  however,  of  les-s  interest  in 
a  biography  than  those  which  were  based  upon  his  own 
impressions  of  the  scenes  depicted,  such  as  his  illustrations 
to  Rogers  and  Scott. 

In  1825  he  exhibited  only  one  picture,  Harbour  of 
Dieppe,  and  in  1826,  the  year  when  the  publication  of  the 
"  Southern  Coast "  terminated,  three,  of  one  of  which  there 
is  told  a  story  of  unselfish  generosity,  which  deserves 
special  record.  The  picture  was  called  Cologne — the  ar- 
rival of  a  Packet-boat — Evening.  Of  this  Mr.  Hamerton 
writes  :  "  There  were  such  unity  and  serenity  in  the  work, 
and  such  a  glow  of  light  and  colour,  that  it  seemed  like  a 
window  opened  upon  the  land  of  the  ideal,  where  the 
harmonies  of  things  are  more  perfect  than  they  have  ever 
been  in  the  common  world."  The  picture  was  hung  be- 
tween two  of  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence's  portraits,  and  Turner 
covered  its  glowing  glory  with  a  wash  of  lampblack,  so  as 
not  to  spoil  their  effect.  "  Poor  Lawrence  was  so  unhappy," 
he  said.  "  It  will  all  wash  off  after  the  Exhibition."  As 
Mr.  Hamerton  truly  observes,  "  It  is  not  as  if  Turner  had 
been  indifferent  to  fame." 

There  are  many  stories  of  apparently  contrary  action  on 
Turner's  part,  namely,  of  heighteniug  the  colour  of  his 
pictures  to  "  kill  "  those  of  his  neighbours  at  the  Academy, 
but  they  do  not  spoil  this  story.  During  those  merry 
"  varnishing  days "  which  Turner  enjoyed  so  much, 
attempts  to  outcolour  one  another  were  ordinary  jokes — 
give-and-take  sallies  of  skill,  made  in  good  humour. 
No  one  entered  into  such  contests  with  more  zest  than 
Turner,  and  he  was  not  always  the  victor.  This  story 
seems  to  us  to  prove  that  when  Turner  saw  that  any  one 


100  TURNER. 

was  really  hurt,  his  tenderness  was  greater  than  his  spirit 
of  emulation  and  jest. 

Leslie  tells  the  best  of  the  "  counter  stories." 

"  In  1832,  when  Constable  exhibited  his  Opening  of  Waterloo  Bridge, l 
it  was  placed  in  the  School  of  Painting— one  of  the  small  rooms  at 
Somerset  House.  A  sea  piece,2  by  Turner,  was  next  to  it — a 
grey  picture,  beautiful  and  true,  but  with  no  positive  colour  in  any  part 
of  it — Constable's  Waterloo  seemed  as  if  painted  with  liquid  gold  and 
silver,  and  Turner  came  several  times  into  the  room  while  he  was 
heightening  with  Termilion  and  lake  the  decorations  and  flags  of  the 
City  barges.  Turner  stood  behind  him,  looking  from  the  Waterloo  to 
his  own  picture,  and  at  last  brought  his  palette  from  the  great  room, 
where  he  was  touching  another  picture,  and  putting  a  round  daub  of  red 
lead,  somewhat  bigger  than  a  shilling,  on  his  grey  sea,  went  away  with- 
out saying  a  word.  The  intensity  of  the  red  lead,  made  more  vivid  by 
the  coolness  of  the  picture,  caused  even  the  vermilion  and  lake  of  Con- 
stable to  look  weak.  I  came  into  the  room  just  as  Turner  left  it.  '  He 
has  been  here,'  said  Constable,  '  and  fired  a  gun.' " 

On  the  opposite  wall  was  a  picture,  by  Jones,  of  Shadrach,  Meshaeh, 
and  Abednego  in  the  furnace.3  "A  coal,"  said  Cooper,  "has  bounced 
across  the  room  from  Jones's  picture,  and  set  fire  to  Turner's  sea."  The 
great  man  did  not  come  into  the  room  for  a  day  and  a  half;  and  then  in 
the  last  moments  that  were  allowed  for  painting,  he  glazed  the  scarlet 
seal  he  had  put  on  his  picture,  and  shaped  it  into  a  buoy." 4 

This  daub  of  red  lead  was  rather  defensive  than  offen- 
sive, and  there  is  no  story  of  Turner  which  shows  any 
malice  in  his  nature.  To  his  brother  artists  he  was 
always  friendly  and  just ;  he  never  spoke  in  their  dis- 
paragement, and  often  helped  young  artists  with  a  kind 
.word  or  a  practical  suggestion.  Even  Constable — between 


1  Called  in  the  Catalogue  Whitehall  Stairs,  June  18th,  1817. 
*  Helvoetsluys :  the  City  of  Utrecht,  64,  going  to  sea. 

3  Turner  had  a  picture  of  the  same  subject  in  another  room.    The 
two  artists  had  agreed  together  that  each  should  paint  it. 

4  Leslie's  "  Autobiographical  Recollections,"  vol.  i.  pp.  202,  203. 


ITALY  AND   FRANCE.  101 

whom  and  Turner  not  much  love  was  lost,  according  to 
Thornbury — he  helped  on  one  occasion  by  striking  in  a 
ripple  in  the  foreground  of  his  picture — the  "  something  " 
just  wanted  to  make  the  composition  satisfactory.  We 
think,  then,  that  we  may  enjoy  the  beautiful  story  of  self- 
sacrifice  for  Lawrence's  sake,  without  any  disagreeable  re- 
flection that  it  is  spoilt  by  others  showing  a  contrary  spirit 
towards  his  brother  artists. 

The  year  1826  was  his  last  at  Sandycombe.  As  he  had 
taken  it  for  the  sake  of  his  father,  so  he  gave  it  up,  for 
"  Dad "  was  always  working  in  the  garden  and  catching 
cold.  He  took  this  step  much  to  his  own  sorrow,  we 
believe,  and  much  to  our  and  his  loss.  Without  the 
pleasant  and  wholesome  neighbourhood  of  the  Trimmers, 
with  no  home  but  the  gloomy,  dirty,  disreputable  Queen 
Anne  Street,  he  became  more  solitary,  more  self-absorbed, 
or  absorbed  in  his  art  (much  the  same  thing  with  him), 
and  lived  only  to  follow  unrestrained  wherever  his  way- 
ward genius  led  him,  and  to  amass  money  for  which  he 
could  find  no  use.  How  he  still  loved  to  grasp  it,  how- 
ever, and  how  unscrupulous  he  was  in  doing  so,  is  pain- 
fully shown  in  his  dispute  with  Cooke  about  this  time 
(1827),  which  prevented  a  proposed  continuation  of  the 
"  Southern  Coast."  Mr.  Cooke's  letter  relating  to  it, 
though  long,  is  too  important  to  omit,  and,  though  it  may 
be  said  to  be  ex  parte,  carries  sad  conviction  of  its  truth: — 

"January  I,  1827. 
"  DEAR  SIB, 

"  I  cannot  help  regretting  that  you  persist  in  demanding  twenty- 
five  sets  of  India  proofs  before  the  letters  of  the  continuation  of  the  work 
of  the '  Coast,'  besides  being  paid  for  the  drawings.  It  is  like  a  film  before 
your  eyes,  to  prevent  your  obtaining  upwards  of  two  thousand  pounds  in 
a  commission  for  drawings  for  that  work. 


102  TURNER. 

"  Upon  mature  reflection  you  must  see  I  have  done  all  in  my  power  to 
satisfy  you  of  the  total  impossibility  of  acquiescing  in  such  a  demand ;  it 
would  be  unjust  both  to  my  subscribers  and  to  myself. 

"  The  '  Coast '  being  my  own  original  plan,  which  cost  me  some  anxiety 
before  I  could  bring  it  to  maturity,  and  an  immense  expense  before  I 
applied  to  you,  when  I  gave  a  commission  for  drawings  to  upwards  of 
£400,  at  my  own  entire  risk,  in  which  the  shareholders  were  not  willing 
to  take  any  part,  I  did  all  I  could  to  persuade  you  to  have  one  share, 
and  which  I  did  from  a  firm  conviction  that  it  would  afford  some  remune- 
ration for  your  exertions  on  the  drawings,  in  addition  to  the  amount  of 
the  contract.  The  share  was,  as  it  were,  forced  upon  you  by  myself, 
with  the  best  feelings  in  the  world;  and  was,  as  you  well  know,  re- 
peatedly refused,  under  the  idea  that  there  was  a  possibility  of  losing 
money  by  it.  You  cannot  deny  the  result:  a  constant  dividend  of 
profit  has  been  made  to  you  at  various  times,  and  will  be  so  for  some 
time  to  come. 

"  On  Saturday  last,  to  my  utter  astonishment,  you  declared  in  my 
print-rooms,  before  three  persons,  who  distinctly  heard  it,  as  follows :  '  I 
will  have  my  terms,  or  I  will  oppose  the  work  by  doing  another  "  Coast !" ' 
These  were  the  words  you  used,  and  every  one  must  allow  them  to  be  a 
threat. 

"  And  this  morning  (Monday),  you  show  me  a  note  of  my  own  hand- 
writing, with  these  words  (or  words  to  this  immediate  effect) :  '  The 
drawings  for  the  future  "  Coast "  shall  be  paid  twelve  guineas  and  a  half 
each.' 

"  Now,  in  the  name  of  common  honesty,  how  can  you  apply  the  above 
note  to  any  drawings  for  the  first  division  of  the  work  called  the '  Southern 
Coast,'  and  tell  me  I  owe  you  two  guineas  on  each  of  those  drawings  ? 
Did  you  not  agree  to  make  the  whole  of  the  '  South  Coast '  drawings  at 
£7  10s.  each  ?  and  did  I  not  continue  to  pay  you  that  sum  for  the  first 
four  numbers  ?  When  a  meeting  of  the  partners  took  place,  to  take  into 
consideration  the  great  exertions  that  myself  and  my  brother  had  made 
on  the  plates,  to  testify  their  entire  satisfaction,  and  considering  the 
difficulties  I  had  placed  myself  in  by  such  an  agreement  as  I  had  made 
(dictated  by  my  enthusiasm  for  the  welfare  of  a  work  which  had  been 
planned  and  executed  with  so  much  zeal,  and  of  my  being  paid  the  small 
sum  only  of  twenty-five  guineas  for  each  plate,  including  the  loan  of  the 
drawings,  for  which  I  received  no  return  or  consideration  whatever  on 
the  part  of  the  shareholders),  they  unanimously  (excepting  on  your  part) 
and  very  liberally  increased  the  price  of  each  plate  to  .£40 ;  and  I  agreed, 
on  my  part,  to  pay  you  ten  guineas  for  each  drawing  after  the  fourth 


ITALY  AND   FRANCE.  103 

number.  And  have  I  not  kept  this  agreement  ?  Yes ;  you  have  received 
from  me,  and  from  Messrs.  Arch  on  my  account,  the  whole  sum  so  agreed 
upon,  and  for  which  you  have  given  me  and  them  receipts.  The  work 
has  now  been  finished  upwards  of  six  months,  when  you  show  me  a  note 
of  my  own  handwriting,  and  which  was  written  to  you  in  reply  to  a  part 
of  your  letter,  where  you  say, '  Do  you  imagine  I  shall  go  to  John 
(/Groat's  House  for  the  same  sum  I  receive  for  the  Southern  part  ?  '  Is 
this/air  conduct  between  man  and  man — to  apply  the  note  (so  explicit 
in  itself)  to  the  former  work,  and  to  endeavour  to  make  me  believe  I  still 
owe  you  two  guineas  and  a- halt  on  each  drawing  ?  Why,  let  me  ask 
you,  should  I  promise  you  such  a  sum  ?  What  possible  motive  could  I 
have  in  heaping  gold  into  your  pockets,  when  you  have  always  taken 
such  especial  care  of  your  interests,  even  in  the  case  of  Neptune's  Trident, 
which  I  can  declare  you  presented  to  me ;  and,  in  the  spirit  of  this  under- 
standing, I  presented  it  again  to  Mrs.  Cooke.  You  may  recollect  after- 
wards charging  me  two  guineas  for  the  loan  of  it,  and  requesting  me  at 
the  same  time  to  return  it  to  you,  which  has  been  done. 

"  The  ungracious  remarks  I  experienced  this  morning  at  your  house, 
where  I  pointed  out  to  you  the  meaning  of  my  former  note — that  it  re- 
ferred to  the  future  part  of  the  work,  and  not  to  the  '  Southern  Coast ' — 
were  such  as  to  convince  me  that  you  maintain  a  mistaken  and  most  un- 
accountable idea  of  profit  and  advantage  in  the  new  work  of  the  '  Coast,' 
and  that  no  estimate  or  calculation  will  convince  you  to  the  contrary. 

"  Ask  yourself  if  Hakewill's '  Italy,' '  Scottish  Scenery,'  or '  Yorkshire' 
works  have  either  of  them  succeeded  in  the  return  of  the  capital  laid 
out  on  them. 

"  These  works  have  had  in  them  as  much  of  your  individual  talent  as 
the  '  Southern  Coast,'  being  modelled  on  the  principle  of  it ;  and  although 
they  have  answered  your  purpose,  by  the  commissions  for  drawings,  yet 
there  is  considerable  doubt  remaining  whether  the  shareholders  and  pro- 
prietors will  ever  be  reinstated  in  the  money  laid  out  on  them.  So  much  for 
the  profit  of  works.  I  assure  you  I  must  turn  over  an  entirely  new  leaf 
to  make  them  ever  return  their  expenses. 

"  To  conclude,  I  regret  exceedingly  the  time  I  have  bestowed  in  en- 
deavouring to  convince  you  in  a  calm  and  patient  manner  of  a  number 
of  calculations  made  for  your  satisfaction ;  and  I  have  met  in  return  such 
hostile  treatment  that  I  am  positively  disgusted  at  the  mere  thought  of 
the  trouble  I  have  given  myself  on  such  a  useless  occasion. 
"  I  remain, 

"  Your  obedient  servant, 

"W.  B.  COOKE." 


104  TURNER. 

When  we  realize  that  this  was  the  same  man  that  closed 
his  connection  with  Mr.  Lewis,  because  he  would  not  both 
etch  and  aquatint  the  plates  of  the  Liber  for  the  same  terms 
as  those  agreed  upon  for  aquatinting  alone,  we  are  able  to 
understand  why  he  was  characterized  as  a  "great  Jew,"  in 
a  letter  of  introduction,  which  he  brought  from  a  publisher 
in  London  to  one  in  Yorkshire,  when  he  went  to  that  county 
to  illustrate  Dr.  Whitaker's  History  of  Richmondshire.  Mrs. 
Whitaker,  who  was  his  hostess  at  the  time,  hearing  of  this 
took  the  phrase  literally,  and,  says  Mr.  Hamerton,  "treated 
him  as  an  Israelite  indeed,  possibly  with  reference  to  church 
attendance  and  the  consumption  of  ham." 

In  1827  was  published  the  first  part  of  his  largest  series 
of  prints,  the  "  England  and  Wales,"  which  were  engraved 
with  matchless  skill  by  that  trained  band  of  engravers 
who  brought,  with  the  artist's  assistance,  the  art  of  en- 
graving landscapes  in  line  to  a  point  never  before  attained. 
The  history  of  Turner  and  his  engravers  has  yet  to  be 
fully  written ;  the  number  of  them  from  first  to  last  is 
extraordinary,  probably  nearry  one  hundred.  Of  these, 
twenty,  and  nearly  all  the  best,  were  employed  on  this 
work — Groodall,  Wallis,  Willmore,  W.  Miller,  Braudard, 
Radcliffe,  Jeavons,  W.  R.  Smith,  and  others.  Never  before 
was  so  great  an  artist  surrounded  by  such  a  skilled  body 
of  interpreters  in  black  and  white.  The  drawings  were 
unequal  in  merit,  but  nearly  all  of  them  wonderful  for 
power  of  colour  and  daring  effect,  with  ever  lessening 
regard  for  local  accuracy.  The  artist  threw  aside  all  tradi- 
tions and  conventions,  and  proclaimed  himself  as  "  Turner," 
the  great  composer  of  chromatic  harmonies  in  forms  of  sea 
and  sky,  hills  and  plains,  sunshine  and  storm,  towns  and 
shipping,  castles  and  cathedrals.  He  could  not  do  this 


ITALY   AND   FRANCE.  105 

without  sacrificing  much  of  truth,  and  much  of  what  was 
essential  truth  in  a  work  whose  aim  was  professedly  topo- 
graphical. Imaginative  art  of  all  kinds  has  a  code  analo- 
gous to,  but  not  identical  with,  the  moral  code  :  beauty 
takes  the  seat  of  virtue  and  harmony  of  truth,  and  when 
the  work  is  purely  imaginative,  there  is  no  conflict  between 
fancy  and  fact  which  can  make  the  strictest  shake  his  head. 
But  when  known  facts  are  dealt  with  by  the  imagination, 
the  conflict  arises  immediately,  and  it  would  scarcely  be 
possible  to  find  a  case  in  which  it  was  more  obvious  than 
in  Turner's  "  England  and  Wales,"  in  which  he  made  the 
familiar  scenes  of  his  own  country  conform  to  the  autho- 
ritative conception  of  his  pictorial  fancy.  Whether  he  was 
right  or  wrong  in  raising  the  cliffs  of  England  to  Alpine 
dignity,  in  saturating  her  verdant  fields  with  yellow  sun, 
in  exaggerating  this,  in  ignoring  that,  has  been  argued 
often,  and  will  be  argued  over  and  over  again ;  but  all  art 
is  a  compromise,  and  the  precise  justice  of  the  compromise 
will  ever  be  a  matter  of  opinion.  Art  v.  Nature  is  a  cause 
which  will  last  longer  than  any  Chancery  suit.  Even 
artists  cannot  agree  as  to  the  amount  of  licence  which  it 
is  proper  to  take,  but  they  are  all  conscious  that  they  at 
least  keep  on  the  right  side ;  one  thing  only,  all,  or  nearly 
all,  are  agreed  upon,  and  that  is  that  licence  must  be  taken, 
or  art  becomes  handicraft.  About  Turner  almost  the  only 
thing  which  can  be  said  with  certainty  is  that  he  stretched 
his  liberty  to  the  extreme  limits. 

Yet  to  the  pictorial  code  of  morals  he  was  the  most 
faithful  of  artists,  he  almost  always  reached  beauty,  his 
harmonies  were  almost  always  perfect,  and  he  strove  after 
his  own  peculiar  generalization  of  fact,  and  his  own  peculiar 
extract  of  truth  with  the  greatest  ardour.  This  extract 


106  TURNER. 

was  his  impression  of  a  place,  made  up  generally  (at 
least  in  his  foreign  scenes)  of  two  or  three  sketches  taken 
from  different  points  of  view,  and  he  was  very  careful  to 
stndy  not  only  the  principal  features  of  the  country,  but 
the  costume  and  employment  of  the  inhabitants,  and  the 
description  of  local  vehicle,  on  wheels  or  keel.  From  these 
studies  would  arise  the  conception  of  one  scene,  combining 
all  that  his  mind  retained  as  essential — a  growth  which, 
however  false  it  might  appear  when  compared  with  the 
actual  facts  of  the  place  from  one  point  of  view,  contained 
nothing  but  what  had  a  germ  of  truth,  and  of  local  truth. 
That  this  applies  to  all  his  drawings  we  do  not  say,  but  we 
are  confident  that  it  does  to  most.  Many  of  his  drawings 
for  the  "  England  and  Wales  "  were  probably  taken  from 
sketches  that  had  lain  in  his  portfolios  for  years,  and  were 
dressed  up  by  him  when  wanted,  with  such  accessories  of 
storm  and  rainbow  as  occurred  to  his  fancy,  or  to  his 
memory  and  feelings  as  connected  with  the  spot.  There 
is,  we  think,  no  doubt  that  Turner  strove  to  be  conscien- 
tious ;  but  his  conscience  was  a  "  pictorial "  conscience,  and 
no  man  can  judge  him.  We  can  only  take  his  works  as 
they  are,  and  be  thankful  that  all  the  strange  confusions 
of  his  mind,  and  mingled  accidents  of  his  life,  have  pro- 
duced so  unique  and  beautiful  a  result  as  the  "  England 
and  Wales."  It  is  no  use  now  regretting  that  his  vast 
powers  in  their  prime  were  used  wastefully  in  what  will 
appear  to  many  as  the  falsification  of  English  landscape  ; 
it  is  far  better  to  rejoice  that  the  genius  and  knowledge  of 
the  man  were  so  transcendent  that,  in  spite  of  all  the  worst 
that  can  be  said,  each  separate  drawing  is  precious  in  itself 
as  a  record  of  natural  phenomena,  and  a  masterly  arrange- 
ment of  indefinite  forms  and  beautiful  colour. 


ITALY   AND   FRANCE.  1C  7 

Mr.  Ruskin  affirms  that,  "  howsoever  it  came  to  pass,  a 
strange,  and  in  many  respects  grievous  metamorphosis 
takes  place  upon  him  about  the  year  1825.  Thenceforth 
he  shows  clearly  the  sense  of  a  terrific  wrongness,  and 
sadness,  mingled  in  the  beautiful  order  of  the  earth ;  his 
work  becomes  partly  satirical,  partly  reckless,  partly — and 
in  its  greatest  and  noblest  features — tragic."  We  are 
not  prepared  to  assent  to  this  entirely,  especially  as  Mr. 
Buskin  states  immediately  afterwards  that  one  at  least 
of  the  manifestations  of  "  this  new  phase  of  temper  "  can 
be  traced  unmistakably  in  the  "  Liber,"  which  was  con- 
cluded six  years  before;  but  there  is  no  doubt  that  his 
work  for  some  of  these  years  was  distinguished  by  reckless- 
ness and  caprice  in  an  unusual  degree,  and  we  have  little 
doubt  that  his  removal  from  Sandycombe,  and  the  conse- 
quent loss  of  healthy  companionship,  had  something  to  do 
with  it.  During  three  years  he  exhibited  no  pictures  of 
special  interest,  except  the  Cologne  of  1826,  and  the 
Ulysses  deriding  Polyphemus  of  1829.  This  latter  picture 
we  take  to  be  a  sure  sign  of  recovery,  as  it  shows  perhaps 
the  most  complete  balance  of  power  of  any  of  his  large 
works,  being  not  less  wonderful  for  happy  choice  of  subject 
than  for  grandeur  of  conception  and  splendour  of  colour 
— the  first  picture  in  which,  since  the  Apollo  and  Pytlion  of 
1811,  the  union  between  the  literary  subject  and  the  land- 
scape, or  (if  we  must  use  that  horrid  word)  seascape,  was 
perfect.  This  picture  was  no  Temple  and  Portico,  with  the 
drowning  of  Aristobulus.  The  grand  indefinite  figure  of  the 
agonized  giant,  the  crowded  ship  of  Ulysses,  the  water- 
nymphs  and  the  dying  sun,  are  all  parts  of  one  conception, 
and  show  what  Turner  could  do  when  his  imagination 
was  thoroughly  inflamed.  "Whence  the  inspiration  was 


108  TURNER. 

derived  it  is  difficult  to  say.  Like  most  of  his  inspirations, 
it  probably  had  more  than  one  source.  Homer's  Odyssey 
is  the  source  given  in  the  catalogue;  but  it  is  probable, 
as  we  before  have  hinted,  that  the  figure  of  Polyphemus 
was  suggested  by  the  splendid  description  in  the  four- 
teenth book  of  Ovid's  Metamorphoses.  Many  years  had 
lapsed  since  he  had  shown  the  full  force  of  his  imagina- 
tion under  the  influence  of  classical  story,  and  he  was 
never  to  do  so  again.  Subjects  of  the  kind  suited  to  his 
peculiar  genius  were  difficult  to  find,  and  he  had  no  such 
habitual  intercourse  with  his  intellectual  peers  as  enabled 
him  to  gather  suggestions  for  his  works.  He  was  thrown 
entirely  on  his  own  uneducated  resources,  and  the  result 
was,  with  his  imperfect  knowledge  of  his  own  strength 
and  the  limits  of  his  art,  partial  failure  of  most,  and  total 
failure  of  many  of  his  most  strenuous  eflftrts.  This  is  one 
of  the  saddest  facts  of  his  art-life,  the  frequent  waste,  or 
partial  waste,  of  unique  power. 

His  increasing  isolation  of  mind  was  mitigated  no  doubt 
by  constant  visits  to  Petworth,  Farnley,  and  other  houses  of 
his  friends  and  patrons,  by  the  chaff  of  "varnishingdays," 
by  social  meetings  of  the  Academy  Club,  and  by  frequent 
travel ;  but  it  increased  notwithstanding.  Not  Mr.  Trim- 
mer, nor  Lord  Egremont,  nor  even  his  friends  and  fellow 
Academicians,  Chantrey  and  Jones,  could  break  through 
his  barrier  of  reserve  and  see  the  man  Turner  face  to  face. 
From  the  beginning  he  had  his  secrets,  and  he  kept  them  to 
the  end.  He  could  be  merry  and  social  in  a  gathering  where 
the  talk  never  became  confidential,  and  with  children  (whom 
he  could  not  distrust)  ;  but  his  living-rooms  in  Queen 
Anne  Street,  his  painting-room  wherever  he  was,  and  his 
heart,  were,  with  scarcely  an  exception,  opened  to  none.  At 


ITALY   AND   FRANCE.  109 

Petworth,  Lord  Egremont  indeed  was  allowed  to  enter  his 
studio;  bat  he  had  to  give  a  peculiar  knock  agreed  upon 
between  them  before  he  would  open  the  door. 

In  1828  he  was  at  Rome  again,  from  which  place  he 
wrote  the  following  letters1  to  Chantrey  and  Jones  of 
unusual  length  and  interest. 

«  TO  GEORGE  JONES,  E.A. 

"  ROME, 

"  Oct.  13,  1828. 
"  DEAR  JONES, 

"  Two  months  nearly  in  getting  to  this  terra  pictura,  and  at 
work  ;  but  the  length  of  time  is  my  own  fault.  I  must  see  the  South  of 
France,  which  almost  knocked  me  up,  the  heat  was  so  intense,  particu- 
larly at  Nismes  and  Avignon  ;  and  until  I  got  a  plunge  into  the  sea  at 
Marseilles,  I  felt  so  weak  that  nothing  but  the  change  of  scene  kept  me 
onwards  to  my  distant  point.  Genoa,  and  all  the  sea-coast  from  Nice  to 
Spezzia,  is  remarkably  rugged  and  fine ;  so  is  Massa.  Tell  that  fat 
fellow  Chantrey  that  I  did  think  of  him,  then  (but  not  the  first  or  the 
last  time)  of  the  thousands  he  had  made  out  of  those  marble  craigs 
•which  only  afforded  me  a  sour  bottle  of  wine  and  a  sketch  ;  but  he  de- 
serves everything  which  is  good,  though  he  did  give  me  a  fit  of  the  spleen 
at  Carrara. 

"  Sorry  to  hear  your  friend,  Sir  Henry  Bunbury,  has  lost  his  lady. 
How  did  you  know  this?  You  will  answer,  of  Captain  Napier,  at  Siena. 
The  letter  announcing  the  sad  event  arrived  the  next  day  after  I  got 
there.  They  were  on  the  wing — Mrs.  W.  Light  to  Leghorn,  to  meet 
Colonel  Light,  and  Captain  and  Mrs.  Napier  for  Naples ;  so,  all  things 
considered,  I  determined  to  quit  instanter,  instead  of  adding  to  the 
trouble. 

"  Hope  that  you  have  beeu  better  than  usual,  and  that  the  pictures  go 
on  well.  If  you  should  be  passing  Queen  Anne  Street,  just  say  I  am  well, 
and  in  Rome,  for  I  fear  young  Hakewell  has  written  to  his  father  of  my 
being  unwell :  and  may  I  trouble  you  to  drop  a  line  into  the  two- 
penny post  to  Mr.  C.  Heath,  6,  Seymour  Place,  New  Pancras  Church, 
or  send  my  people  to  tell  him  that,  if  he  has  anything  to  send  me, 

1  They  are  printed  as  given  by  Thornbury. 


110  TURNER. 

to  put  it  up  in  a  letter  (it  is  the  most  sure  way  of  its  reaching  me), 
directed  for  me,  No.  12,  Piazza  Mignanelli,  Rome,  and  to  which  place 
I  hope  you  will  send  me  a  line  ?  Excuse  my  troubling  you  with  my 
requests  of  business.  Remember  me  to  all  friends.  So  God  bless  you. 
Adieu. 

"J.  M.  W.  TURNER." 

"  TO  FRANCIS  CHANTREY,  R.A. 

"No.  12,  PIAZZA  MIGNANELLI,  ROME, 
"Nov.  6,  1828. 

"Mr  DEAR  CHANTRET, 

"  I  intended  long  before  this  (but  you  will  say,  '  Fudge ! ') 
to  have  written  ;  but  even  now  very  little  information  have  I  to  give 
you  in  matters  of  Art,  for  I  have  confined  myself  to  the  painting 
department  at  Corso ;  and  having  finished  one,  am  about  the  second, 
and  getting  on  with  Lord  E.'s,  which  I  began  the  very  first  touch  at 
Rome;  but  as  the  folk  here  talked  that  I  would  show  them  not,  I 
finished  a  small  three  feet  four  to  stop  their  gabbling.  So  now  to 
business.  Sculpture,  of  course,  first;  for  it  carries  away  all  the  patro- 
nage, so  it  is  said,  in  Rome ;  but  all  seem  to  share  in  the  good-will 
of  the  patrons  of  the  day.  Gott's  studio  is  full.  Wyatt  and  Rennie, 
Ewing,  Buxton,  all  employed.  Gibson  has  two  groups  in  hand,  Venus 
and  Cupid  ;  and  The  Rape  of  Hylas,  three  figures,  very  forward,  though 
I  doubt  much  if  it  will  be  in  time  (taking  the  long  voyage  into  the 
scale)  for  the  Exhibition,  though  it  is  for  England.  Its  style  is  some- 
thing like  The  Psyche,  being  two  standing  figures  of  nymphs  leaning, 
enamoured,  over  the  youthful  Hylas,  with  his  pitcher.  The  Venus  is 
a  sitting  figure,  with  the  Cupid  in  attendance;  and  if  it  had  wings 
like  a  dove,  to  flee  away  and  be  at  rest,  the  rest  would  not  be  the 
worse  for  the  change.  Thorwaldsten  is  closely  engaged  on  the  late 
Pope's  (Pius  VII.)  monument.  Portraits  of  the  superior  animal,  man, 
is  to  be  found  in  all.  In  some,  the  inferior — viz.  greyhounds  and  poodles, 
cats  and  monkeys,  &c.,  &c. 

"  Pray  give  my  remembrances  to  Jones  and  Stokes,  and  tell  him  I 
have  not  seen  a  bit  of  coal  stratum  for  months.  My  love  to  Mrs. 
Chantrey,  and  take  the  same  and  good  wishes  of 

"  Yours  must  truly, 

"J.  M.  W.  TURNER." 

This  method  of  communicating  with  "  his  people "  is 


ITALY    AND   FRANCE.  Ill 

peculiar,  and  shows  that  he  was  not  in  the  habit  of  cor- 
responding with  them  when  away  on  his  numerous  visits 
and  tours.  Perhaps  they  could  not  read,  perhaps  he  wished 
to  save  postage — whatever  hypothesis  we  may  adopt,  the 
fact  is  singular.  The  pictures  of  Tlie  Banks  of  tlie  Loire; 
The  Loretto  Necklace;  Messieurs  les  Voyageurs  on  their 
return  from  Italy  (par  la  Diligence)  in  a  snmvdrift  upon 
Mount  Tarra,  22nd  of  January,  1829— all  exhibited  in  1829 
— were  the  results  of  this  tour,  besides  some  of  the  pictures 
of  1830,  one  of  which,  View  of  Orvieto,  is,  according  to  Mr. 
Hamerton,  the  identical  "  small  three  feet  four "  which 
he  painted  to  "  stop  the  gabbling  "  of  the  folk  at  Rome. 

In  this  year  (1830,  he  being  then  fifty-five  years  old) 
died  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence,  whose  loss  he  probably  felt 
much,  and  of  whose  funeral  he  painted  a  picture  (from 
memory)  ;  but  the  year  had  a  greater  sorrow  for  him  than 
this — the  loss  of  his  "  poor  old  Dad."  The  removal  from 
Twickenham  did  not  avail  to  preserve  the  old  man's  life  for 
long.  We  have  the  testimony  of  the  Trimmers,  with  whom 
after  the  event  he  stayed  for  a  few  days  for  change  of 
scene,  that  "  he  was  fearfully  out  of  spirits,  and  felt  his 
loss,  he  said,  like  that  of  an  only  child,"  and  that  he 
"  never  appeared  the  same  man  after  his  father's  death." 
To  men  like  Turner,  who  are  not  accustomed  to  express 
their  feelings  much,  or  even  to  realize  them,  such  blows 
come  with  all  their  natural  violence  unchecked,  unforeseen, 
unprovided  against.  It  had  probably  never  occurred  to 
him  how  much  his  father  was  to  him,  how  blank  a  space 
his  loss  would  make  in  his  narrow  garden  of  human  affec- 
tion. From  this  time  he  was  to  know  many  losses  of 
old  friends,  each  of  which  fell  heavily  upon  him,  leaving 
him  more  lonely  than  ever.  His  friends  were  few,  and  they 


112  TURNER. 

dropped  one  by  one,  nor  is  there  any  evidence  to  show  that 
their  loss  was  ever  lightened  by  any  hope  of  meeting  them 
again;  the  lights  of  his  life  went  out  one  by  one,  and  left 
him  alone  and  in  the  dark.  In  1833  Dr.  Monro  died,  in 
1836  Mr.  Wells,  in  1837  Lord  Egremont,  in  1841  Chantrey, 
and  be  was  to  feel  the  loss  of  Mr.  Fawkes  and  Wilkie,  and 
many  more  before  his  own  time  came. 
In  February,  1830,  he  wrote  to  Jones: — 

"  DEAR  JONES — I  delayed  answering  yours  until  the  chance  of  this 
finding  you  in  Rome,  to  give  you  some  account  of  the  dismal  prospect  of 
Academic  affairs,  and  of  the  last  sad  ceremonies  paid  yesterday  to  de- 
parted talent  gone  to  that  bourn  from  whence  no  traveller  returns. 
Alas !  only  two  short  months  Sir  Thomas  followed  the  coffin  of  Dawe 
to  the  same  place.  We  then  were  his  pall-bearers.  Who  will  do  the 
like  for  me,  or  when,  God  only  knows  how  soon !  However,  it  is  some- 
thing to  feel  that  gifted  talent  can  be  acknowledged  by  the  many  who 
yesterday  waded  up  to  their  knees  in  snow  and  muck  to  see  the  funeral 
pomp  swelled  up  by  carriages  of  the  great,  without  the  persons  them- 
selves." 

No  doubt  these  deaths  set  him  thinking  of  his  own,  and 
the  disposition  of  his  wealth  so  useless  to  him,  and  he 
probably  brooded  long  over  the  will  that  he  signed  on  the 
10th  of  June  in  the  next  year  (1831).  Many  excuses  have 
been  made  for  his  niggardly  habits  on  the  score  of  the  noble- 
ness of  mind  shown  in  this  document;  he  screwed  and  denied 
himself  (we  are  told)  when  living,  to  make  old  artists  com- 
fortable after  his  death.  We  are  afraid  that  there  is  no 
ground  for  this  charitable  view,  nor  any  evidence  that  he 
ever  denied  himself  anything  that  he  preferred  to  hard 
cash,  or  that  he  ever  thought  of  giving  it,  or  any  farthing 
of  it,  away  to  anybody,  till  he  had  more  than  he  could  spend, 
and  was  brought  by  the  deaths  of  his  friends  to  realize  that 
he  could  not  take  it  with  him  when  he  died.  Then  indeed 


ITALY   AND   FRANCE.  113 

he  disposed  of  it ;  but  where  was  the  bulk  to  go  ?  Not  to 
his  nearest  of  kin,  whom  he  had  neglected  all  his  life — fifty 
pounds  was  enough  for  uncles,  and  twenty-five  for  their 
eldest  sons  ;  not  to  his  mistress  or  mistresses,  who  had  been 
devoted  to  him  all  his  life,  or  to  his  children — annuities  of 
ten  and  fifty  pounds  were  enough  for  them ;  but  for  the  per- 
petuation of  his  name  and  fame,  as  the  founder  of  "  Turner's 
Gift  "  and  the  eclipser  of  Claude.1 

We  do  not  know  when  Turner  became  acquainted  with 
Samuel  Rogers  ;  but  probably  some  years  before  this,  as  he 
is  named  as  one  of  the  executors  in  the  will,  and  the  famous 
illustrated  edition  of  "  Italy "  was  published  in  1830, 
followed  by  the  Poems  in  1834.  These  contain  the  most 
exquisite  of  all  the  engravings  from  Turner's  vignettes. 
Exquisite  also  are  most  of  the  drawings,  but  some  of 
them  are  spoilt  by  the  capriciousness  of  their  colour, 
which  seems  in  many  cases  to  have  been  employed  as 
an  indication  to  the  engraver  rather  than  for  the  purpose 
of  imitating  the  hues  of  nature.  The  most  beautiful  per- 
haps of  all,  Tomaro's  misty  brow,  seems  to  us  far  too  blue, and 
the  yellow  of  the  sky  in  others  is  too  strong  to  be  probable 
or  even  in  harmony  with  the  rest  of  the  drawing.  It 
would,  however,  be  difficult  to  find  in  the  whole  range  of 
his  works  two  really  greater  (though  so  small  in  size)  than 
the  Alps  at  Daybreak,  and  Datur  hora  quieti,  of  which  we 
give  woodcuts,  losing  of  course  much  of  the  light  refine- 
ment of  the  steel  plates,  but  wonderfully  true  in  general 
effect.  The  former  is  as  perfect  an  illustration  as  possible 
of  the  sentiment  of  Rogers's  pretty  verses,  but  it  far  tran- 

1  In  his  first  will  he  only  leaves  two  pictures  to  the  Nation,  the  Sun 
Rising  through  Mist  and  the  Carthage,  and  on  condition  that  they  were 
to  be  hung  side  by  side  with  the  great  Claudes. 

I 


114  TURNER. 

scends  them  in  beauty  and  imagination ;  the  latter  is  not  in 
illustration  of  any  of  the  poet's  verses,  but  is  a  more 
beautiful  poem  than  ever  Rogers  wrote. 

The  illustration  from  "  Jacqueline "  which  we  give, 
though  not  so  transcendent  in  imagination,  is  a  scene  of 
extraordinary  beauty  of  rock  and  torrent,  and  castle-crowned 
steep,  such  as  no  hand  but  Turner's  could  have  drawn,  while 
the  Vision  from  "The  Voyage  of  Columbus"  is  equally 
characteristic,  showing  how  he  could  make  an  impressive 
picture  out  of  the  vaguest  notions  by  his  extraordinary 
mastery  of  light  and  shade. 

In  1833  Turner  exhibited  his  first  pictures  of  Venice, 
the  last  home  of  his  imagination.  The  date  of  his  first 
visit  to  the  "  floating  city  "  is  uncertain.  There  are  two 
series  of  Venetian  sketches  in  the  National  Gallery,  which 
mark  two  distinct  impressions.  In  the  first  the  colour  is 
comparatively  sober ;  the  sky  is  noted  as,  before  all  things,  a 
marvellously  blue  sky ;  the  interest  of  the  painter  is  in  the 
watery  streets,  the  picturesqueness  of  corners  here  and 
there,  in  narrow  canals  and  the  different-coloured  marbles 
of  the  buildings  ;  he  takes  the  city  in  bits  from  the  inside  in 
broad  daylight,  and  they  are  studies  as  realistic  as  he  could 
make  them  at  the  time.  In  the  other  series  the  interest  of 
the  painter  is  COLOUR,  not  of  the  buildings,  but  of  the  sunsets 
and  sunrises,  the  clouds  of  crimson  and  yellow,  the  water 
of  green,  in  which  the  sapphire  and  the  emerald  and  the 
beryl  seem  to  blend  their  hues.  The  substantial  marble, 
the  solid  blue  sky,  the  strong  light  and  sharp  shadows  have 
melted  into  visions  of  ethereal  palaces  and  gemlike  colour, 
like  those  in  the  Apocalypse.  As  he  began  painting  the 
sea  from  Vandevelde  and  nature,  so  he  began  painting 
Venice  from  Canaletti  and  nature  }  but  the  transition  from 


LIGHT-TOWERS   OF   THE   HEVE. 
From  "  Rivers  of  France." 


ITALY  AND  FRANCE.  115 

the  studious  beginning  to  the  imaginative  end  was  very 
swift  in  the  latter  case.  Venice  soon  became  to  him  the  para- 
dise of  colour,  and  he  rose  to  heights  of  chromatic  daring 
which  exceeded  anything  which  even  he  had  scaled  before. 
The  time  at  which  we  have  now  arrived  was  that  of  his 
earlier  sketches,  and  he  could  turn  away  from  Venice  and 
draw  with  unabated  zest  the  quieter  but  still  lovely 
scenery  of  the  Seine  and  the  Loire.  To  1833-4  and  1835 
belong  his  beautiful  series  called  The  Rivers  of  France. 
Opinions  are  divided,  as  usual,  as  to  the  truthfulness  of 
his  art  to  the  spirit  of  French  scenery,  and  a  comparison 
between  The  Light-towers  of  the  neve  in  our  woodcut,  and 
the  drawing  which  he  made  on  the  spot  (now  in  the  National 
Gallery)  will  show  how  greatly  his  imagination  altered  the 
literal  facts  of  a  scene.  One  who  has  patiently  followed 
his  footsteps  in  many  parts  of  England  and  on  the  Conti- 
nent testifies  to  the  puzzling  effects  of  Turner's  imaginative 
records.  He  seeks  in  vain  on  the  face  of  the  earth  the 
original  of  Turner's  later  drawings,  but  he  can  never  see 
these  drawings  without  finding  all  that  he  has  seen.  In- 
deed, to  understand  them  rightly,  they  must  be  con- 
sidered as  poems  in  colour  suggested  by  pictorial  recollec- 
tions of  certain  scenes  on  the  rivers  of  France.  Most  of 
them  are  arrangements  of  blue,  red,  and  yellow,  some  of 
yellow  and  grey,  all  exquisitely  beautiful  in  arrangement 
of  line  and  atmospheric  effect.  Nor  has  he  in  any  other 
drawings  introduced  figures  and  animals  with  more  skill 
and  beauty  of  suggestion.  The  whole  series  palpitates  with 
living  light,  although  the  pigments  employed  are  opaque, 
and  each  view  charms  the  sense  of  colour- harmony,  although 
the  colours  are  crude  and  disagreeable.  It  has  always 
appeared  wonderful  to  us  that,  with  his  power  over  water- 


116  .    TURNER. 

colours  and  delight  in  clear  tones,  he  should  have  been 
content  to  work  with  such  chalky  material  and  impure 
tints ;  it  is  as  though  he  preferred  to  combat  difficulties ; 
but  they  were  drawn  to  be  engraved,  and  as  long  as  he  got 
his  harmonies  and  his  light  and  shade  true  we  suppose  he 
was  content.  The  great  skill  with  which  he  could  utilize 
the  grey  paper  on  which  these  drawings  were  made,  leav- 
ing it  uncovered  in  the  sky  and  other  places  where  it 
would  serve  his  purpose,  conduced  to  swiftness  of  work, 
and  may  have  been  one  of  his  motives.  The  drawing  of 
Jumieges,  of  which  we  give  a  woodcut,  is  one  of  the  loveliest 
of  the  series,  with  its  mouldering  ruin  standing  out  for  a 
moment  like  a  skeleton  against  the  steely  cloud,  before 
the  fierce  storm  covers  it  with  gloom. 

In  these  yearly  visits  to  France,  Turner  was  accompanied 
by  Mr.  Leitch  Ritchie,  who  supplied  the  work  with  some 
description  of  the  places.  They  travelled,  however,  very 
little  together ;  their  tastes  in  everything  but  art  being 
exceedingly  dissimilar.  "I  was  curious,"  says  his  com- 
panion, "in  observing  what  he  made  of  the  objects  he 
selected  for  his  sketches,  and  was  frequently  surprised  to 
find  what  a  forcible  idea  he  conveyed  of  a  place  with 
scarcely  a  correct  detail.  His  exaggerations,  when  it  suited 
his  purpose  to  exaggerate,  were  wonderful — lifting  up,  for 
instance,  by  two  or  three  stories,  the  steeple,  or  rather, 
stunted  cone,  of  a  village  church — and  when  I  returned  to 
London  I  never  failed  to  roast  him  on  this  habit.  He  took 
my  remarks  in  good  part,  sometimes,  indeed,  in  great  glee, 
never  attempting  to  defend  himself  otherwise  than  by  roll- 
ing back  the  war  into  the  enemy's  camp.  In  my  account 
of  the  famous  Gilles  de  Retz,  I  had  attempted  to  identify 
that  prototype  of  '  Blue  Beard '  with  the  hero  of  the  nursery 


118  TURNER. 

story,  bj  absurdly  insisting  that  his  beard  was  so  intensely 
black  that  it  seemed  to  have  a  shade  of  blue.  This  tickled 
the  great  painter  hugely,  and  his  only  reply  to  my  banter- 
ing was — his  little  sharp  eyes  glistening  the  while — '  Blue 
Beard  !  Blue  Beard  !  Black  Beard  ! '  " 

We  do  not  know  when  Turner  became  first  acquainted 
with  Mr.  Munro  of  Novar,  one  of  the  greatest  admirers  of 
the  artist  and  collectors  of  his  later  works,  but  it  was  in 
1836  that  we  first  hear  of  them  as  travelling  together, 
when,  it  is  said,  "a  serious  depression  of  spirits  having 
fallen  on  Mr.  Munro,"  Turner  proposed  to  divert  his  mind 
into  fresh  channels  by  travel.  They  went  to  Switzerland 
and  Italy,  and  Mr.  Munro  found  that  Turner  enjoyed  him- 
self in  his  way — a  "  sort  of  honest  Diogenes  way  " — and 
that  it  was  easy  to  get  on  very  pleasantly  with  him  "  if 
you  bore  with  his  way,"  a  description  which,  meant  to  be 
kind,  does  not  say  much  for  his  sociability  at  this  period. 

Indeed,  he  had  been  all  his  life,  and  especially,  we  expect, 
since  he  left  Twickenham,  developing  as  an  artist  and 
shrivelling  as  a  man,  and  after  this  year  (1836),  though  he 
still  developed  in  power  of  colour  and  painted  some  of  his 
finest  and  most  distinctive  works,  the  signs  of  change,  if 
not  of  decline,  were  also  visible.  He  was  also  getting  out 
of  the  favour  of  the  public,  who  could  not  see  any  beauty 
in  such  works  as  the  Burning  of  the  Houses  of  Lords  mid 
Commons,  of  1835,  or  Juliet  and  her  Nurse,  of  1836. 

His  fame  began  to  oscillate,  tottering  with  one  picture 
and  set  upright  by  another.  As  long,  however,  as  he  could 
paint  such  pictures  as  Mercury  cmd  Argus,  1836,  and  the 
Fighting  T6m&raire,  of  1839,  it  was  in  a  measure  safe.  He 
was  still  a  great  genius  to  whom  eccentricities  were  natural, 
but  the  Fighting  Tem&raire  was  the  last  picture  of  his  at 


o  2; 

5  °° 

H  "* 

»  .§ 


120  TURNER. 

which  no  stone  was  thrown.  This  is  in  many  ways  the 
finest  of  all  his  pictures.  Light  and  brilliant  yet  solemn  in 
colour ;  penetrated  with  a  sentiment  which  finds  an  echo  in 
every  heart ;  appealing  to  national  feeling  and  to  that  larger 
sympathy  with  the  fate  of  all  created  things ;  symbolic,  by 
its  contrast  between  the  old  three-decker  and  the  little 
steam-tug,  of  the  "old  order,"  which  "changeth,  yielding 
place  to  new  " — the  picture  was  and  always  will  be  as  popu- 
lar as  it  deserves.  It  is  characteristic  of  Turner  that  the 
idea  of  the  picture  did  not  originate  with  him,  but  with 
Stanfield.  Would  that  Turner  had  always  had  some  friend 
at  his  elbow  to  hold  the  torch  to  his  imagination. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

LIGHT     AND     DARKNESS. 
1840  TO  1851. 

TURNER  was  now  sixty-five  years  old,  and  his  decline 
as  an  artist  was  to  be  expected  from  failing  health 
and  stress  of  years.  For  little  less  than  half  a  century 
he  had  worked  harder  and  produced  more  than  any  other 
artist  of  whom  we  have  any  record.  Nor  would  he  rest 
now,  although  his  failing  powers  of  body  and  mind  re- 
quired stimulants  to  support  their  energy. 

Mr.  Wilkie  Collins  informed  Mr.  Thornbury  that,  when 
a  boy — 

"  He  used  to  attend  his  father  on  varnishing  days,  and  remembers 
seeing  Turner  (not  the  more  perfect  in  his  balance  for  the  brown  sherry 
at  the  Academy  lunch)  seated  on  the  top  of  a  flight  of  steps,  astride  a 
box.  There  he  sat,  a  shabby  Bacchus,  nodding  like  a  Mandarin  at  his 
picture,  which  he,  with  a  pendulum  motion,  now  touched  with  his  brush 
and  now  receded  from.  Yet,  in  spite  of  sherry,  precarious  seat,  and  old 
age,  he  went  on  shaping  in  some  wonderful  dream  of  colour ;  every 
touch  meaning  something,  every  pin's  head  of  colour  being  a  note  in  the 
chromatic  scale." 

We  have  spoken  of  Turner  as  declining  as  an  artist, 
but  we  are  not  sure  that  he  did  so  till  about  1845,  when, 
Mr.  Ruskin  says,  "  his  health,  and  with  it  in  great  degree 


122  TURNER. 

his  mind,  failed  suddenly."  Down  to  this  time  his  decay 
seems  to  us  to  have  been  more  physical  than  artistic,  but 
with  the  physical  weakness  there  had  been,  we  think,  for 
some  time  a  deterioration  of  the  non-artistic  part  of  his 
mind.  His  decay,  though  so  unlike  the  decay  of  others, 
appears  to  us  to  have  nothing  inexplicable  about  it  if  we 
consider  him  as  a  man  who  had  never  had  any  sympathy 
with  the  current  opinions  and  culture  of  his  fellows,  and 
who,  by  some  strange  defect  in  his  organization,  was 
unable  to  think  without  the  use  of  his  eyes.  That  his 
eyesight  failed  there  is  no  doubt,  but  that  it  did  not  fail  in 
the  one  most  essential  point  for  a  painter,  viz.,  perception 
of  colour,  is,  we  think,  proved  by  his  latest  sketches  in  water- 
colour,  which  show  none  of  that  apparently  morbid  love  of 
yellow  which  appears  in  his  later  oil  pictures,  and  testify 
to  that  perfect  perception  of  the  relations  and  harmonies 
of  different  hues  which  can  only  belong  to  a  healthy  sight. 
Instead  of  declining,  this  faculty  of  colour  seems  to  have 
increased  in  perfection  almost  to  the  last.  If  we  compare 
the  sketch  in  the  National  Gallery  of  a  scene  on  the  Lake 
of  Zug,  done  between  1840  and  1845,  with  one  of  the' 
'  Rivers  of  England '  Dartmouth,  two  drawings  wonderfully 
alike  in  composition  and  in  general  scheme  of  colour, 
no  difference  in  this  faculty  can  be  observed  ;  the  later 
drawing  is  only  a  few  notes  higher  in  the  scale.  As 
Mr.  Ruskin  says,  "  The  work  of  the  first  five  years  of 
this  decade  is  in  many  respects  supremely  and  with 
reviving  power,  beautiful." 

But  still  the  decline  of  his  non-artistic  mind,  never  very 
powerful,  had  been  going  on  for  years,  or  at  least  such 
reasoning  power  as  he  possessed  had  exercised  less  and 
less  control  over  the  imperious  will  of  his  genius,  which 


LIGHT  AND   DARKNESS.  123 

impelled  him  to  pursue  his  efforts  to  paint  the  unpaintable. 
He  had  begun  by  imitation,  he  had  gone  on  by  rivalry,  he 
had  achieved  a  style  of  his  own  by  which  he  had  upset 
all  preconceived  notions  of  landscape  painting,  and  had 
triumphed  in  establishing  the  superiority  of  pictures 
painted  in  a  light  key,  but  he  was  not  content.  His 
progress  had  always  been  towards  light  even  from  the 
earliest  days,  when  he  worked  in  monochrome.  Sunlight 
was  his  discovery,  he  had  found  its  presence  in  shadow, 
he  had  studied  its  complicated  reflections,  before  he  com- 
menced to  work  in  colour.  From  monochrome  he  had 
adopted  the  low  scale  of  the  old  masters,  but  into  it  he 
carried  his  light ;  the  brown  clouds,  and  shadows,  and 
mists,  had  the  sun  behind  them  as  it  were  in  veiled 
splendour.  Then  it  came  out  and  flooded  his  drawings 
and  his  canvasses  with  a  glory  unseen  before  in  art.  But 
he  must  go  on — refine  upon  this — having  eclipsed  all  others, 
he  must  now  eclipse  himself.  His  gold  must  turn  to 
yellow,  and  yellow  almost  into  white,  before  his  genius 
could  be  satisfied  with  its  efforts  to  express  pure  sunlight. 

So  he  went  on  to  his  goal,  becoming  less  "  understanded 
of  the  people  "  each  year,  painting  pictures  more  near  to 
the  truth  of  nature  in  sun  and  clouds,  and  less  true  in 
everything  else.  But  it  was  about  the  everything  else 
that  the  people  most  cared.  They  did  not  care  for  sun- 
light which  blinded  them,  and  to  which  the  truth  of  figure, 
and  sea,  and  grass,  and  stone,  had  to  be  sacrificed.  They 
liked  pictures  which  could  give  them  calm  enjoyment, 
records  of  what  they  had  seen  or  could  imagine,  not  of 
what  Turner  only  had  seen,  and  what  seemed  to  them 
extravagant  falsity. 

Such,  roughly  put,  was  the  condition  of  things  when  a 


124  TURNER. 

champion  Arose  to  scatter  Turner's  enemies  to  the  four 
winds.  He,  Mr.  Ruskin  (1836),  an  undergraduate  at 
Oxford,  of  the  age  of  seventeen,  was  one  not  of  "the 
people,"  but  of  those  comparatively  few  lovers  of  art  and 
colour  who  saw  and  appreciated  the  artistic  motives  of 
Turner,  and  who  reverenced,  as  a  revelation  of  hitherto 
unrecorded,  if  not  undiscovered,  beauties  of  nature,  those 
pictures  at  which  the  world  scoffed.  We  cannot  here 
enter  further  into  the  discussion  involved,  but  the  attitude 
of  the  two  parties,  the  one  represented  by  "  Blackwood's 
Magazine,"  and  the  other  by  "  Modern  Painters,"  can  be 
judged  by  the  following  extracts.  The  noble  enthu- 
siasm aroused  by  the  treatment  of  Juliet  and  her  Nurse 
by  the  critics,  had  suggested  a  letter  in  1836,  which 
gradually  increased  into  a  volume,  not  published  till  1843, 
and  in  the  meantime  the  undergraduate  had  gained  the 
Newdegate,  and  earned  the  right  to  call  himself  "A 
Graduate  of  Oxford  "  on  his  title-page. 

This  is  what  Maga  said  in  August,  1835,  of  Turner's 
picture  of  Venice,  from  the  porch  of  Madonna  della  Salute, 
a  picture  in  his  earlier  Venetian  style : — 

"  Venice,  well  I  have  seen  Venice.  Venice  the  magnificent,  glorious, 
queenly,  even  in  her  decay — with  her  rich  coloured  buildings,  speaking 
of  days  gone  by,  reflected  in  the  green  water.  What  is  Venice  in  this 
picture  ?  A  flimsy,  whitewashed  meagre  assemblage  of  architecture, 
starting  off  ghostlike  into  unnatural  perspective,  as  if  frightened  at  the 
affected  blaze  of  some  dogger  vessels  (the  only  attempt  at  richness  in  the 
picture).  Not  Venice,  but  the  boat  is  the  attractive  object,  and  what  is 
to  make  this  rich  ?  Nothing  but  some  green  and  red,  and  yellow  tinsel, 

which  is  so  flimsy  that  it  is  now  cracking The  greater  part 

of  the  picture  is  white,  disagreeable  white,  without  light  or  transparency, 
and  the  boats,  with  their  red  worsted  masts,  are  as  gewgaw  as  a  child's 
toy,  which  he  may  have  cracked  to  see  what  it  was  made  of.  As  to 
Venice,  nothing  can  be  more  unlike  its  character." 


LIGHT   AND   DARKNESS.  125 

This  is  what  the  Graduate  of  Oxford  says,  after  stating 
his  dissatisfaction  with  the  Venices  of  Canaletti,  Front,  and 
Stanfield:— 

"  But  let  us  take  with  Turner,  the  last  and  greatest  step  of  all — 
thank  Heaven  we  are  in  sunshine  again — and  what  sunshine  !  Not  the 
lurid,  gloomy,  plaguelike  oppression  of  Canaletti,  but  white  flushing 
fulness  of  dazzling  light,  which  the  waves  drink  and  the  clouds  breathe, 
bounding  and  burning  in  intensity  of  joy.  That  sky — it  is  a  very 
visible  infinity — liquid,  measureless,  unfathomable,  panting  and  melting 
through  the  chasms  in  the  long  fields  of  snow-white  flaked,  slow-moving 
vapour,  that  guide  the  eye  along  the  multitudinous  waves  down  to  the 
islanded  rest  of  the  Euganean  hills.  Do  we  dream,  or  does  the  white 
forked  sail  drift  nearer,  and  nearer  yet,  diminishing  the  blue  sea  between 
us  with  the  fulness  of  its  wings  ?  It  pauses  now  ;  but  the  quivering  of 
its  bright  reflection  troubles  the  shadows  of  the  sea,  those  azure  fathom- 
less depths  of  crystal  mystery,  on  which  the  swiftness  of  the  poised 
gondola  Hoats  double,  its  black  beak  lifted  like  the  crest  of  a  dark  ocean 
bird,  its  scarlet  draperies  flashed  back  from  the  kindling  surface,  and  its 
bent  oar  breaking  the  radiant  water  into  a  dust  of  gold.  Dreamlike  and 
dim,  but  glorious,  the  unnumbered  palaces  lift  their  shafts  out  of  the 
hollow  sea — pale  ranks  of  motionless  flame — their  mighty  towers  sent 
up  to  heaven  like  tongues  of  more  eager  fire — their  grey  domes  looming 
vast  and  dark,  like  eclipsed  worlds — their  sculptured  arabesques  and 
purple  marble  fading  farther  and  fainter,  league  beyond  league,  lost  in 
the  light  of  distance.  Detail  after  detail,  thought  beyond  thought,  you 
find  and  feol  them  through  the  radiant  mystery,  inexhaustible  as  indis- 
tinct, beautiful,  but  never  all  revealed ;  secret  in  fulness,  confused  in 
symmetry,  as  nature  herself  is  to  the  bewildered  and  foiled  glance, 
giving  out  of  that  indistinctness,  and  through  that  confusion,  the  per- 
petual newness  of  the  infinite  and  the  beautiful. 

"  Yes,  Mr.  Turner,  we  are  in  Venice  now." 

Unfortunately  the  brave  yonng  champion  was  too  late, 
the  eloquent  voice  that  could  translate  into  such  glowing 
words  the  dumb  poetry  of  Turner's  pictures  had  scarcely 
made  the  air  of  England  thrill  with  its  musical  enthu- 
siasm when  black  night  fell  upon  the  artist.  The 
sudden  snapping  of  some  vital  chord,  of  which  that  same 


126  TURNER. 

Graduate  of  Oxford  only  last  year  pathetically  wrote,  took 
place,  and  the  glorious  sun  of  his  genius  disappeared  with- 
out any  twilight ;  he  was  dead  as  an  artist,  and  dying  as  a 
man.  Neither  his  work  nor  his  life  could  be  defended  any 
more.  But  the  voice  that  was  raised  so  late  in  his  honour 
did  not  die,  its  vibrations  have  lasted  from  that  day  to 
this ;  and  if  the  champion  himself  seems  to  be  in  some 
need  of  a  defender  now,  if  mouths  that  once  were  full  of 
his  praise  are  silent  or  raised  only  for  the  most  part  to 
depreciate,  it  is  only  what  came  to  Turner  and  what  comes 
to  all  who  use  their  imagination  too  freely  to  enforce  their 
convictions.  A  time  must  come  when  the  spirit  of  analysis 
will  eat  into  the  most  brilliant  rhetoric;  the  false  and 
true,  which  combine  to  make  the  most  beautiful  fabric  of 
words,  cannot  wear  equally  well.  To  us  it  is  always  pain- 
ful to  differ  from  Mr.  Ruskin,  to  whom  we  owe  the  grasp 
of  so  many  noble  truths,  the  memories  of  so  many  de- 
lightful hours ;  and  if  a  time  has  come  when  our  faith  in 
his  dogmas  is  not  absolute,  and  we  feel  that  he  has  mis- 
led us  and  others  now  and  again,  we  cannot  close  reference 
to  him  and  his  works  in  this  little  book  without  testifying 
to  the  great  and  noble  spirit  which  pervades  his  work, 
and  recording  our  admiration  of  a  life  devoted  to  the  ser- 
vice of  art  and  man  and  God  with  a  passionate  purity 
as  rare  as  it  is  beautiful. 

But  before  night  fell,  in  the  interval  between  1840  and 
1845,  Turner  painted  a  few  pictures  of  remarkable  beauty 
both  in  colour  and  sentiment — pictures  which  no  other 
artist  could  have  painted,  and  which  we  doubt  if  he  could 
himself  have  painted  before — pictures  generally  attempt- 
ing to  realize  his  later  ideal  of  Venice,  which  even  now, 
in  their  wrecked  beauty,  fascinate  all  who  have  patience  to 


§ 
i 

1 


128  TURNER. 

look  at  them,  and  watch  the  apparent  chaos  of  yellow  and 
white  and  purple  and  grey  gradually  clear  into  a  vision  of 
ghost-like  palaces  rising  like  a  dream  from  the  golden  sea. 
Besides  these  he  painted  at  least  three  others  of  unique 
power :  one  a  record  of  what  few  other  men  could  have 
had  the  courage  to  study  or  the  power  to  paint ;  one  show- 
ing the  passion  of  despair  at  the  loss  of  an  old  comrade  ; 
and  another  the  boldest  attempt  to  represent  abstract 
ideas  in  landscape  that  was  ever  made.  We  allude  to  the 
Snowstorm;  Peace,  Burial  at  Sea;  and  Rain,  Steam,  and 
Speed. 

Mr.  Hamerton  says,  in  connection  with  the  first  of 
these: — 

"  Let  it  not  be  supposed  that  these  works  of  Turner's  decline,  however 
they  may  have  exercised  the  wit  of  critics,  and  excited  the  amusement 
of  visitors  to  the  Exhibition,  were  ever  anything  less  than  serious  per- 
formances for  him.  The  Snowstorm,  for  example  (1842),  afforded  the 
critics  a  precious  opportunity  for  the  exercise  of  their  art.  They  called 
it  soapsuds  and  whitewash,  the  real  subject  being  a  steamer  in  a  storm 
off  a  harbour's  mouth  making  signals,  and  going  by  the  lead.  In  this 
instance,  nothing  could  be  more  serious  than  Turner's  intention,  which 
was  to  render  a  storm  as  he  had  himself  seen  it  one  night  when  the 
'  Ariel'  left  Harwich.  Like  Joseph  Vernet,  who,  when  in  a  tempest  off 
the  island  of  Sardinia,  had  himself  fastened  to  the  mast  to  watch  the 
effects,  Turner  on  this  occasion, '  got  the  sailors  to  lash  himself  to  the 
mast  to  observe  it,'  and  remained  in  that  position  for  four  hours.  He 
did  not  expect  to  escape,  but  had  a  curious  sort  of  conscientious  feeling, 
that  it  was  his  duty  to  record  his  impression  if  he  survived." l 

Of  the  second,  which  was  painted  to  commemorate 
Wilkie's  funeral,  it  is  related  that  Stanfield  complained  of 
the  blackness  of  the  sails,  and  that  Turner  answered,  "  If 
I  could  find  anything  blacker  than  black  I'd  use  it."2 

1  Hamerton,  pp.  286-87.  a  Ibid.,  p.  292. 


LIGHT  AND   DARKNESS.  129 

The  history  of  his  late  Swiss  sketches  and  the  drawings 
he  made  from  them  has  been  recently  told  by  Mr.  Ruskin 
in  his  valuable  and  interesting  notes  to  his  collection  of 
Turner's  drawings  exhibited  last  year  (1878),  and  these 
notes  and  the  almost  equally  interesting  notes  of  the  Rev. 
W.  Kingsley,  contained  between  the  same  covers,  testify  not 
only  to  the  supreme  beauty  of  his  later  work,  but  also 
to  the  nobler  motive  which  inspired  its  production,  viz. 
the  desire  to  "  record  "  as  far  as  he  could  what  he  had  seen 
after  "fifty  years'  observation."  The  days  of  strife  and  emu- 
lation were  over,  and  a  humbler,  sweeter  spirit  made 
him  "put  forth  his  full  strength  to  depict  nature  as  he 
saw  it  with  all  his  knowledge  and  experience."  Charac- 
teristically, as  all  through  his  life,  this  better  spirit  showed 
itself  rather  in  his  water-colours  made  for  private  persons, 
than  in  those  oils  which  he  exhibited  for  the  judgment 
of  the  public. 

We  wish  we  had  space  here  for  Mr.  Ruskin's  splendid 
description  of  Turner's  picture  of  Slavers  throwing  over- 
board tlie  Dead  and  Dying — a  work  which  seems  to  us  to 
illustrate  what  we  have  said  of  his  manner  of  decline  in 
a  remarkable  way.  There  is  no  doubt  about  its  splendour 
of  colour,  the  grandeur  of  its  sea,  and  the  force  with  which 
its  sentiment  of  horror  and  wrong  and  death  is  conveyed ; 
but  it  shows  a  childishness,  a  want  of  mental  faculties  of 
the  simplest  kind,  which  is  all  the  more  extraordinary 
when  brought  in  contrast  with  such  gigantic  pictorial 
power.  The  sharks  are  quite  unnecessary,  the  bodies 
in  the  water  are  too  many,  the  absurdity  of  the  chains 
appearing  above  it  is  too  gross ;  the  horror  is  overdone 
and  melodramatic,  or,  in  a  word,  one  of  his  finest  pic- 
torial conceptions  is  spoilt  for  want  of  a  little  common 

K 


130  TURNER. 

sense,  of  a  little  power  to  place  himself  in  relation  to 
his  fellows  and  see  how  it  would  appear  to  them.  Again, 
we  cannot  help  wishing  that  he  had  had  a  friend  at  his 
elbow  like  Stanfield,  who  would  have  saved  him  from 
the  laughter  of  small  critics.  He  was  not  fit  to  manage 
such  a  work  on  such  a  subject  by  himself. 

In  his  picture  of  War — the  Exile  and  the  Rock-limpet, 
with  its  extract  from  the  "Fallacies  of  Hope" — 

"  Ah !  thy  tent-formed  shell  is  like 

A  soldier's  nightly  bivouac,  alone 

Amidst  a  sea  of  blood    .... 

.     .     .    But  can  you  join  your  comrades  ?  " 

we  see  the  same  mental  helplessness.  It  verges  on  the 
sublime,  it  verges  on  the  ridiculous.  We  should  be  sorry 
to  call  it  either  ;  but  it  is  childish — not  with  the  grand  sim- 
plicity of  Blake,  but  with  the  confused  complicity  of 
Turner.  Mr.  Ruskin  says  that  Turner  tried  in  vain  to 
make  him  understand  the  full  meaning  of  this  work,  and 
we  are  not  surprised. 

Such  pictures  as  these  had  occurred  now  and  then  all 
through  his  career — pictures  in  which  the  means  em- 
ployed were  utterly  inadequate  to  express  the  sentiment 
duly,  such  as  the  Waterloo, — pictures  in  which  the  accumu- 
lation of  ideas  was  confused  and  excessive,  as  the  Phryne 
going  to  the  Bath  as  Venus,  Demosthenes  taunted  by  JEschines; 
and  he  had  shown  some  hazy  symbolism  in  connection 
with  shell-fish  in  these  verses : — 

"  Boused  from  his  long  contented  cot  he  went 
Where  oft  he  laboured,  and  the     ....     bent, 
To  form  the  snares  for  lobsters  armed  in  mail ; 
But  men,  more  cunning,  over  this  prevail, 


THE     SLAVE     SHIP. 
In  th«  possession  of  Miss  Alice  Hooper,  of 'Boston,  U.S. 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS.  131 

Lured  by  a  few  sea-snail  and  whelks,  a  prey 
That  they  could  gather  on  their  watery  way, 
Caught  in  a  wicker  cage  not  two  feet  wide, 
While  the  whole  ocean's  open  to  their  pride." 

But  now  these  "  failures,"  for  failures  they  were,  however 
fine  the  art  qualities  they  possessed,  became  chronic,  and 
the  rule  rather  than  the  exception  ;  and  this  is  to  us  the 
greatest  tragedy  in  the  whole  of  his  career — the  spectacle 
of  a  great  painter,  the  very  slave  of  his  genius,  compelled 
to  paint  this  and  paint  that  at  its  bidding  without  being 
able  to  distinguish  between  what  was  great  and  what  was 
little,  what  sublime  and  what  ridiculous,  almost  as  mighty 
as  Milton  and  Shelley  one  moment,  and  as  poor  as  Black- 
more  or  Robert  Montgomery  the  next.  He  appears  to  us  in 
these  last  days  like  a  great  ship,  rudderless,  but  still  grand 
and  with  all  sails  set,  at  the  mercy  of  the  wind,  which 
played  with  it  a  little  while  and  then  cast  it  on  the  rocks. 
Rudderless,  masterless,  was  he  also  as  a  man.  We  are 
very  loth  to  believe  the  terrible  picture  of  moral  degra- 
dation supplied  by  the  "best  authority"  to  Mr.  Thorn- 
bury,  and  quoted  in  the  first  chapter  of  this  volume ;  but 
there  is  no  doubt  that  he  lived  by  no  means  a  reputable 
life  in  his  old  age.  As  to  how  he  met  with  Mrs.  Booth,  at 
whose  little  house  by  the  side  of  the  Thames,  near  Cre- 
morne,  he  lived  for  some  time  before  his  death,  we  have  not 
cared  to  inquire,  nor  do  we  intend  to  repeat  the  usual 
stories  about  it ;  nor  will  we  venture  an  opinion  as  to  how 
often  he  took  too  much  to  drink  or  what  was  his  favourite 
stimulant,  or  what  other  excesses  he  committed.  His  whole 
faculties  had  been  absorbed  in  his  art ;  and  when  this 
failed  him — when  he  became  broken  in  health  and  fail- 
ing in  sight — he  had  no  store  of  wise  reflection  to  employ  hie 


132  TURNER. 

mind,  no  harmless  pursuits  to  follow,  no  refined  tastes  to 
amuse  him,  nor,  as  far  as  we  know,  had  he  any  hope  of  any 
future  rectification  of  the  unevennesses  of  this  world. 
Some  of  his  friends  he  had  lost  by  death,  many  were  still 
living  and  ready  to  cheer  his  last  years  if  he  would  have 
had  them,  but  he  would  not.  His  secretiveness  and  love  of 
solitude  clung  to  him  to  the  last. 

He  did  not,  however,  lose  his  love  of  art  and  his  desire 
of  acquiring  knowledge  relating  to  it.  It  was  in  these 
last  years,  1847-49,  that  he  paid  several  visits  to  the  studio 
of  Mr.  May  all,  the  celebrated  photographic  artist,  passing 
himself  off  as  a  Master  in  Chancery,  and  taking  very  great 
interest  in  the  development  of  the  new  process  which  had 
not  then  got  beyond  the  daguerreotype.  To  the  interesting 
account  of  these  visits  printed  by  Mr.  Thornbury,1  we  are 
enabled  by  Mr.  Mayall's  kindness  to  add  that  at  a  time 
when  his  finances  were  at  a  very  low  ebb  in  consequence 
of  litigation  about  patent  rights,  Turner  unasked,  brought 
him  a  roll  of  bank-notes,  to  the  amount  of  £300,  and  gave 
.  it  him  on  the  understanding  that  he  was  to  repay  him  if 
he  could.  This,  Mr.  Mayall  was  able  to  do  very  soon, 
but  that  does  not  lessen  the  generosity  of  Turner's  act. 

Notwithstanding,  however,  such  bright  glimpses  as 
this,  his  last  years  must  have  been  sad  and  dull,  and  his 
greatest  source  of  happiness  was  probably  the  knowledge 
that  whatever  critics  might  say  of  his  later  works,  there 
were  a  few  men  like  Mr.  Munro,  Mr.  Griffiths,  the 
Buskins,  father  and  son,  who  appreciated  them,  and  that 
his  earlier  pictures  not  only  kept  up  their  fame  but  rose 
in  price.  Though  in  decline,  his  fame  was  as  great  as  almost 

1  Thornbury,  pp.  349-51, 


LIGHT  AND   DARKNESS.  133 

he  could  have  wished.  Two  offers  of  £100,000  he  is 
said  to  have  refused  for  the  contents  of  Queen  Anne 
Street;  £5,000  for  his  two  Carthayes.  The  greatest  of 
all  his  triumphs  was  perhaps  when  he  was  waited  upon 
by  Mr.  Griffiths,  with  an  offer  from  a  distinguished  Com- 
mittee, among  whom  were  Sir  Robert  Peel,  Lord  Har- 
dinge,  and  others,  to  buy  these  pictures  for  the  nation. 
This  is  the  greatest  instance  of  his  self-sacrifice,  which  is 
well  attested ;  for  he  refused  to  part  with  them  because 
he  had  willed  them  to  the  nation.  He  might  have  got 
the  money  and  his  wish  also,  but  he  refused.  The  recol- 
lection of  this,  though  it  occurred  some  years  before  he 
died,  should  have  afforded  him  some  pleasant  reflections. 

It  had  been  long  known  that  Turner  had  another  home 
than  that  in  Queen  Anne  Street,  and  he  had  shown  con- 
siderable ingenuity  in  concealing  it,  for  he  used  to  go  oat 
of  an  evening  to  dinner  with  his  friends  when  he  so  willed, 
and  met  them  at  the  Academy  and  other  places.  Almost 
to  the  last  he  could  be  merry  and  sociable  at  such  gather- 
ings, and  there  is  a  very  pleasant  account  of  a  dinner  in 
1850  at  David  Roberts'  house,  given  in  a  note  to  Ballan- 
tyne's  life  of  that  artist,  at  which  Turner  was.  It  is  a 
memorandum  by  an  artist  from  the  country,  and  describes 
Turner's  manner  as — 

"  Very  agreeable,  his  quick  bright  eye  sparkled,  and  his  whole  coun- 
tenance showed  a  desire  to  please.  He  was  constantly  making  or  trying 
to  make  jokes ;  his  dress,  though  rather  old-fashioned,  was  far  from 
being  shabby."  Turner's  health  was  proposed  by  an  Irish  gentleman 
who  had  attended  his  lectures  on  perspective,  on  which  he  complimented 
the  artist.  "  Turner  made  a  short  reply  in  a  jocular  way,  and  concluded 
by  saying,  rather  sarcastically,  that  he  was  glad  this  honourable  gentle- 
man had  profited  so  much  by  his  lectures  as  thoroughly  to  understand 
perspective,  for  it  was  more  than  he  did."  Turner  afterwards,  in  Roberts' 
absence,  took  the  chair,  and,  at  Stanfield's  request,  proposed  Roberts' 


134  TURNER. 

health,  which  he  did,  speaking  hurriedly,  "  but  soon  ran  short  of  words 
and  breath,  and  dropped  down  on  his  chair  with  a  hearty  laugh,  starting 
up  again  and  finishing  with  a '  hip,  hip,  hurrah !'....  Turner  was 
the  last  who  left,  and  Roberts  accompanied  him  along  the  street  to  hail 

a  cab At  this  time  Turner  was  indulging  in  the  singular 

freak  of  living,  under  the  name  of  Mr.  Booth,  in  a  small  lodging  on  the 

banks  of  the  Thames This,  though  now  cleared  up,  was  a 

mystery  to  his  friends  then,  and  Roberts  was  anxious  to  -unravel  it. 
When  the  cab  drove  up  he  assisted  Turner  to  his  seat,  shut  the  door, 
and  asked  where  he  should  tell  cabby  to  take  him ;  but  Turner  was  not 
to  be  caught,  and,  with  a  knowing  wink,  replied, '  Tell  him  to  drive  to 
Oxford  Street,  and  then  I'll  direct  him  where  to  go.'" 

Turner  not  only  kept  his  secret  from  his  friends,  but 
from  Mrs.  Danby,  who,  says  Mr.  Thornbury — 

•'  One  day,  as  she  was  brushing  an  old  coat  of  Turner's,  in  turning 
out  a  pocket,  she  found  and  pounced  on  a  letter  directed  to  him,  and 
written  by  a  friend  who  lived  at  Chelsea.  Mrs.  Danby,  it  appears, 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  Turner  himself  was  probably  at  Chelsea, 
and  went  there  to  seek  for  him,  in  company  with  another  infirm  old 
woman.  From  inquiries  in  a  place  by  the  river-side,  where  gingerbread 
was  sold,  they  came  to  the  conclusion  that  Turner  was  living  in  a  certain 
small  house  close  by,  and  informed  a  Mr.  Harpur,1  whom  she  and 
Turner  knew.  He  went  to  the  place  and  found  the  painter  sinking. 
This  was  on  the  18th  of  December,  1851,  and  on  the  following  day 
Turner  died." 

So  died  the  great  solitary  genius,  Turner,  the  first  of  all 
men  to  endeavour  to  paint  the  full  power  of  the  sun,  the 
greatest  imagination  that  ever  sought  expression  in  land- 
scape, the  greatest  pictorial  interpreter  of  the  elemental 
forces  of  nature,  that  ever  lived.  His  life,  and  character, 
and  art,  complex  as  they  were  in  their  manifestation,  were 
as  simple  in  motive  as  those  of  the  most  ordinary  man.  Art, 


1  Mr.  Harpur,  the  grandson  of  the  sister  of  his  mother,  one  of  his 
executors. 


136  TURNER. 

fame,  and  money  were  what  he  strived  for  from  the  begin- 
ning to  the  end  of  his  days,  and  those  days  were  embittered 
at  the  end  by  fallacies  of  hope  with  regard  to  all  three. 
Critics  laughed  at  him,  he  was  given  no  social  honour, 
(neither  knighted  nor  made  President  of  the  Royal 
Academy),  and  his  money  was  useless.  For  the  meanness 
and  isolation  of  his  existence  he  had  no  one  to  thank  but 
himself,  but  this  was  also,  as  we  hope  we  have  shown  in 
the  course  of  these  pages,  the  natural  result  of  the  motives 
of  his  life. 

The  nobleness  of  his  life  consisted  in  his  devotion  to  land- 
scape art,  and  this  should  cover  many  sins.  He  found  it  sunk 
very  low  :  he  left  it  raised  to  a  height  which  it  had  never 
attained  before.  That  he  could  have  done  this  by  painting 
falsely  is  absurd.  The  falsity  of  his  works  is  just  of  that 
kind  which  comes  from  almost  infinite  knowledge  of  truth. 
He  knew  little  else  but  art  and  nature,  and  he  knew  these 
by  heart.  He  could  make  nature,  and  this  confidence  in 
his  creative  power  led  him  sometimes  into  strange  errors, 
which  no  one  else  could  have  made,  such  as  putting  the 
sun  and  moon  in  impossible  positions  in  the  same  picture, 
and  making  boats  sail  in  opposite  directions  before  the 
wind ;  but  how  much  more  truth  of  natural  phenomena 
has  he  not  given  even  in  such  pictures  than  can  be  found 
in  any  literal  transcript  of  nature !  His  colour  appears  to 
many  to  be  untrue  ;  but  this  is  greatly  due  to  his  clinging 
from  first  to  last  to  one  central  truth — the  sun.  It  was 
that  which  gave  the  pitch  to  his  light,  and  his  colour  too,  as 
in  nature.  To  that  great  light  all  must  be  subservient ;  it  is 
not  the  local  colour  of  an  object  in  the  foreground,  or  the 
strength  of  shade  of  a  particular  cave,  that  controls  the 
chiaroscuro  and  colouring  of  nature,  but  the  sun.  So  all 


LIGHT   AND    DARKNESS.  137 

things  were  sacrificed  to  this ;  the  green  must  go  from  the 
grass,  and  the  shadows  nmst  become  scarlet,  rather  than  this 
truth  should  be  lost.  His  preference  for  harmonies  of  blue, 
red,  and  yellow,  to  the  exclusion  of  green,  never  giving, 
as  Mr.  Leslie  pointed  out,  the  "  verdure"  of  England,  is 
remarkable ;  he  is  the  only  artist  we  know  who,  instead 
of  the  usual  "bit  of  red,"  to  correct  the  green  of  a  land- 
scape, introduces  a  bit  of  "  green  "  (generally  harsh  crude 
green),  to  correct  its  too  great  redness.  (See,  for  instance, 
the  apron  of  the  woman  in  the  left-hand  corner  of  his  draw- 
ing of  Rouen  Cathedral  for  the  "  Rivers  of  France.")  His 
constant  fault,  and,  as  we  think,  an  inexcusable  one,  is 
the  careless  drawing  of  his  figures.  It  is  not  an  excuse 
to  say  that  they  must  not  be  painted  so  as  to  draw  atten- 
tion from  the  landscape ;  first,  because  Turner  in  his  earlier 
pictures  showed  that  he  could  introduce  well -finished 
figures  without  doing  this ;  and  secondly,  because  Turner's 
figures  in  his  later  pictures  do  this  by  their  badness. 
This  carelessness  gradually  grew  on  him,  because  he  would 
not  take  pains  with  them.  He  could  draw  very  small 
figures  very  well,  giving  more  spirit  and  essence  than  any 
other  artist,  in  a  touch.  He  could  indicate  a  shamble,  a 
strut,  a  march,  lassitude,  confidence,  any  physical  or 
mental  quality  of  a  figure  as  easily  as  he  could  a  bough  or 
a  cloud  ;  but  when  he  had  to  draw  a  figure  to  which  time 
must  be  given,  to  perfect  a  definite,  complex,  organized 
form,  he  scamped  it.  His  indication  of  the  spirit  of 
animals  is  often  wonderful,  as  in  the  deer  in  Arundel  Par/;, 
and  the  dogs  in  Troyes. 

Of  Turner's  mind  and  character  apart  from  his  art  not 
much  can  be  said  in  praise.  The  former  we  have  already 
said  so  much  about  that  we  need  only  say  here  that  although 


138  TURNER. 

not  of  a  very  high  order,  except  in  sensibility  and  percep- 
tion, he  showed  now  and  then  capacities  which  might  have 
been  turned  to  good  account  by  more  generous  training. 
Although  his  jokes  were  mainly  practical,  or  of  that  kind 
which  is  understood  by  the  term  "  waggery;"  a  few  good 
things  which  he  said  have  been  reported,  such  for  instance 
as  that  "  indistinctness  was  his  forte ;"  and  though  his 
poetry  is  generally  miserable,  it  here  and  there  contains  a 
fine  expression.  It  is  remarkable,  however,  how  both  his 
wit,  and  what  is  good  in  his  poetry,  are  connected  with 
his  art.  He  never  said  a  thing  worth  recording  about 
anything  else,  and  the  few  good  bits  in  his  poetry  are  all 
reflections  of  a  pictorial  image.  The  utter  helplessness  of 
his  mind,  when  he  tried  to  put  his  reasoning  into  words, 
is  shown  by  Mr.  Hamerton,  in  one  wonderful  extract.  (See 
his  "  Life  of  Turner,"  p.  143.)  "We  do  not  wonder  that  his 
attempts  at  teaching  (though  he  is  said  at  one  time  in  his 
youth  to  have  got  as  much  as  a  guinea  a  lesson)  and  his 
lectures  as  a  professor  of  perspective  were  failures. 

As  to  his  character,  it  was  mainly  negative,  on  all  points 
except  art  and  money.  The  best  part  of  it  was  the  tender- 
ness of  his  heart ;  but  though  we  have  no  doubt  about  this 
fact,  or  that  he  could  occasionally  in  his  later  years  be 
generous  even  in  money,1  this  does  not  raise  our  opinion 
of  him  much,  for  he  had  more  than  he  wished  to  spend. 


1  We  are  informed  by  Mr.  J.  Beavington  Atkinson,  to  whom  we  are 
indebted  for  other  interesting  facts  in  connection  with  Turner,  that  he 
was  not  ungrateful  to  his  early  friends,  the  Narraways  of  Bristol,  but 
supplied  them  from  time  to  time  with  sums  of  money,  and  that  at  his 
death  there  was  a  sum  owing  by  one  of  the  family  who  wished  to  repay 
it,  but  was  informed  by  the  executors  that  Turner  had  left  no  record  of 
any  such  debt. 


LIGHT  AND   DARKNESS.  139 

If  he  was  remarkable  for  kind  and  generous  impulses,  he 
was  still  more  remarkable  for  the  success  with  which  he, 
in  general,  controlled  them.  We  cannot  dispute  Mr. 
Ruskin's  assertion  that  he  never  "  failed  in  an  undertaken 
trust,"  but  we  have  yet  to  learn  that  he  ever  undertook 
one. 

If  it  be  really  true  that,  unasked  and  without  any 
question  of  repayment,  he  gave  a  sum  of  many  thousand 
pounds  on  more  than  one  occasion  to  the  son  of  one  of  his 
friends  and  patrons,  such  an  act  deserves  more  accurate 
record  and  complete  proof.  The  money  was  repaid  in  both 
cases,  it  is  said. 

He  showed  his  best  disposition  in  his  kindness  to  children 
and  animals,  and  his  fellow- artists.  Of  the  last  he  always 
spoke  kindly,  and  to  young  or  old  was  ever  just  and  kind 
and  patient.  Poor  Haydon  said  that  he  "  did  him  justice  ;" 
he  assisted  many  a  young  man  with  a  useful  hint,  and 
once  took  down  one  of  his  pictures  at  the  Academy  to 
find  a  place  for  one  of  an  unknown  man.  He  took  great 
interest  in  the  founding  of  the  Artists'  Benevolent  Fund, 
and  meant  his  accumulated  wealth  to  be  spent  in  a  home 
for  decayed  artists. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  long  before  he  died  he  felt  the 
uselessness  of  wealth  and  a  desire  to  dispose  of  his  own  in 
a  good  way.  The  only  proof  we  have  of  his  notions  of  a 
good  way  is  his  will,  and  that,  as  we  have  already  said,  is 
not  an  unselfish  document,  and  the  codicils  which  he  added 
to  it  from  1831  to  1849  do  not  show  any  increase  of  un- 
selfishness. On  the  contrary,  he  revoked  his  legacies  to 
his  uncles  and  cousins,  and  left  his  finished  pictures  to 
form  a  Turner  Gallery,  and  money  to  found  a  Turner 
medal  and  a  monument  to  himself  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral. 


140  TURNER. 

The  will  and  its  codicils  were  so  confused  that  all  the 
legal  ability  of  England  was  unable  to  decide  what  Turner 
really  wanted  to  be  done  with  his  money,  and  after  years 
of  miserable  litigation,  during  which  a  large  portion  of  it 
was  wasted  in  legal  expenses,  a  compromise  was  effected, 
in  which  the  wishes  of  the  parties  to  the  suits  and  others 
concerned,  including  the  nation  and  the  Royal  Academy, 
were  consulted  rather  than  the  wishes  of  the  testator : 
his  desire  to  found  a  charity  for  decayed  artists,  the  only 
thing  upon  which  his  mind  seems  to  have  been  fixed 
from  first  to  last  in  these  puzzled  documents,  was  over- 
thrown, and  his  next  of  kin,  the  only  persons  mentioned 
in  his  will  whom  he  certainly  did  not  mean  to  get  a 
farthing,  got  the  bulk  of  the  property  (excepting  the  pic- 
tures). We  have  no  doubt  it  was  quite  right;  we  are 
very  glad  the  nation  got  all  the  pictures  and  drawings, 
finished  and  unfinished,  and  the  Royal  Academy  £20,000  ; 
that  there  are  a  Turner  medal  and  a  Turner  Gallery,  and 
we  think  that  the  next  of  kin  should  have  had  a  great 
deal  of  his  money :  but  surely  the  greatest  fallacy  of  all 
Turner's  hope  was  that  his  will  would  be  construed 
according  to  his  intentions. 

Two  of  his  wishes  with  regard  to  himself  were,  however, 
fully  carried  out — his  desire  to  be  buried  in  St.  Paul's  and 
the  expenditure  of  £1,000  on  his  monument.  His  funeral 
was  conducted  with  considerable  pomp  and  ceremony,  his 
"  gifted  talents,"  to  use  his  own  words,  "  acknowledged  by 
the  many,"  and  many  of  his  fellow-artists  and  admirers 
followed  him  to  the  grave  ;  nor  amongst  the  crowd  were 
wanting  a  few  old  friends  who  in  their  hearts  still  cherished 
him.  as  "  dear  old  Turner." 


"  DATUR    liOKA    QUIETI." 


INDEX. 


(The  Names  of  Paintings  and  Drawings  are  printed  in  Italics.") 


Page 
Academy,  Royal,  School  of.     .     15 

Academy  Club 108 

Academy,  in  St.  Martin's  Lane .     13 

Academy,  in  Soho 15 

Almanacks,  drawings  for     .     .     47 

Alps  at  Daybreak 113 

Apollo  and  Python.     .     .     .67,107 
Apuleia  and  Apuleius  .     .  69,  76,  93 

Army  of  the  Meats 49 

Artists'  Benevolent  Fund     .     .139 
ArundelPark 137 

Banks  of  the  Loire Ill 

Basire 44 

Battle  of  the  Nile 49 

Bay  of  Baice 97 

Bible,  Illustrations  of,  Finden's 

98,  99 

Birmingham 33 

"  Black  wood's  Magazine  "   .     .  124 

Bonneville 53 

Booth,  Mrs 131 

Boswell's  "Antiquities" .     .     .     14 
"  Britannia  Depicta  "  ....     47 

Britton,  John 22 

Burnet,  John 50 

Burning  of  the  Houses  of  Lords 
and  Commons.  ,     .118 


Page 

Bushey 18, 23 

Buttemure,  Lake 41 

Byron,  Illustrations  to    .     .     .     98 

Calais  Pier 53 

Caligula's  Palace  and  Bridge    .     97 

Canaletti 114 

Carthage 70 

Carthage,  Decline  of  ....  93 
Carthage,  Dido  building  .  93,113 
Chantrey  .  .  .  108,  109,  110,  112 
Chateau  de  St.  Michel.  .  .  53,  54 

Chester 33 

Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage  .     .     97 

Chryses 48 

Claude  Lorrain  .  .  50,61,63,113 
Collins,  Wilkie — Description  of 

Turner 121 

Cologne 99,  107 

Composition,  Turner's  method 

105,  106 
Constable's  Opening  of  Waterloo 

Bridge 100 

Constable's  Whitehall  Stairs  .  100 
Continent,  Second  Tour  on 

the 76 

Cooke,  Dispute  with    .    .    .58, 101 
Letter  from      .     .    101,  &c. 


144 


INDEX. 


"  Copperplate  Magazine,"  draw- 
ings for 32 

Cozens,  J.     .     .     .      21,  26,  27,  67 
Crossing  the  Brook  .     80,  84,  93,  94 
Crowle,   Mr.,  early  patron  of 
Turner.     .     .'..     .     .     .  14,  16 

Danby,  Mrs 134 

Daniell 26 

Dartmouth 122 

Datur  hora  quieti 113 

Dayes 26,  28 

De  Loutherbourg  27,  38, 39, 49, 86 
Devonshire,  Tour  in  .  .  .  .  79 

Dido  and  Mneas 93 

Dragons 70-74 

Eastlake,  Sir  Charles ....     83 

Edridge 15,23,27 

Egglestone  Abbey 94 

Egremont,  Lord     76,  108,  109,  110 
"  England  and  Wales "    .     .     .104 
Engravings  coloured  at  Brent- 
ford  14 

Exeter,  Turner's  visit  to .     .     .     84 

Fall  of  the  Ehine  at  Schaffhattsen  53 
"  Fallacies  of  Hope  "  ....  130 
Falls  in  Valombre— Illustration 

of  "  Jacqueline  " 114 

Farnley 45,  46,  108 

Favvkes  ....  44,45,76,112 
Festival  of  the  Vintage  of  Macon  53 

Fifth  Plague 49 

Finden's  Illustrations  of  the 

Bible 98,  99 

Fishermen  at  Sea 34 

Fishermen  Coming  Ashore  .  34,  35 
Fishing  Boats  in  a  Squall  .  .  50 
Fonthill,  drawings  of .  ...  48 


Page 

Frosty  Morning 89 

Funeral  of  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence  111 

Gainsborough  .  .  23,  24,  27,  38 
Gawthorpe,  drawing  of  ...  45 
Girtin  .  15,  21,  23,  24,  26,  27,  28 
Glacier  and  Source  oftheArvtron  53 

Glover 27 

Goddess  of  Discord.  .  .  .  52,  72 
Greene,  Thomas  (extract  from 

Diary) 35 

Griffiths 132,  133 

Hakewills,  The 109 

HakewilFs  "  Picturesque  Tour  " 

— Illustrations  to  .  98,  99,  103 
Hamerton.  .  31,  39,  48,  104,  128 
Hammersmith,  Turner's  life  at  86 
Hand  Court,  Turner's  Studio 

in 32 

Hannibal  Crossing  the  Alps  .  66,  76 

Harbour  of  Dieppe 99 

Hardinge,  Lord 133 

Hard  wick,  Architect  .  .  .  15,  25 
Harpur,  Henry,  executor  .  .  8 
Harpur,  Mrs.  Turner's  aunt  .  8 
Harrison,  employed  by  ...  32 

Haydon 139 

Hearne 15,  23,  26 

Heath,  C 109 

Helvoetsluys 100 

Henderson,  Mr 16,26,28 

Hey  sham  Village 94 

Higham,  T 94 

Hornby  Castle 64,  94 

Howard  (R.A.),  Portrait  by,  at 

Heston 88 

Hunt,  W 15 


Italy,  First  Visit  to 


92 


INDEX. 


145 


Page 

Italy,    Picturesque    Tour    of, 
Hakewill's.     ...    98,  99,  103 

Jason 48,  74 

Johns,  Ambrose 83 

Jones 108 

Letter  to     ....    109,112 

Juliet  and  her  Nurse  .  .  118,124 
Jumtiges 116 

Kingsley,  Rev.  W.,  Notes  of    .129 

Lambeth,  Archbishop's  Palace  at  32 
Lawrence,  SirTbomas,  Turner's 

generosity  to 99 

Lawrence,  Sir  Thomas,  death 

of Ill 

Lectures  on  perspective   .     133, 138 
Leslie's  Autobiographical  Recol- 
lections  100 

Lewis,  Engraver,  quarrel  with 
Turner  ........    57 

"  Liber  Studiorum  "    52,  55,  66,  89, 

107 

Light-towers  of  the  Htve  .  .  .115 
Little  DeviFs  Bridge  ....  62 

Loretto  Necklace Ill 

Lowson,  Newby 22 

Maiden  Lane 10 

Malton,  Thomas  .  .  .  15,  20,  25 
Margate  Church,  early  drawing 

of 13 

Margate,  School  at     ....     15 

Marlow 23 

Marshall,  Mother's  maiden  name  6 
Marshall,  Uncle  ....  8,  13 
"  Mawman's  Tour  "  ....  47 

Mayall,  Mr 132 

Mercury  and  Argus     .    .     .    .118 


Page 

Messieurs  lea  Voyageurs  on  their 
return  from  Italy    .    .     .    .111 

Miller,  T 23 

"  Modern  Painters  "  ....  124 
Monro,Dr.  15,18,23,24,25,27,112 

Moonlight, 34 

Morland 27,  38 

Morning  on  the  Coniston  Fells  .  4 1 
MunroofNovar  .  .  .  118,132 

Narcissus  and  Echo     ....     48 

Narraway 18, 32 

National  Gallery,  Drawing  in  .     94 

Neptune's  Trident 103 

Norham  Castle 41 

Orvieto 110,111 

Ovid's  "  Metamorphoses"      66,  68, 
69,  108 

Oxford,  Pictures  of     ....    86 
Oxford,  Scene  near,  early  draw- 
ing    14 

Palice,  Mr.,  Drawing  Master  .  15 
Pantheon,  After  Fire  ....  34 
Peace,  Burial  at  Sea  ....  128 
Pearce,  Miss .......  83 

Peel,  Sir  Robert 133 

Pembury  Mill 62 

Perspective,  Professor  of.     .     .     75 

Petworth .76,  108,  109 

Phryne 130 

Pindar,  Peter 82 

Pine 23 

"  Pocket  Magazine,"  drawings 

for 32 

Poetry,  Turner's    .    .    .    .   67,  68 

Porden 15,  16 

Poussin,  Nicolas 63 

"  Provincial  Antiquities,"  Illus- 
trations to 92 


146 


INDEX. 


Page 
.     94 


Pye,  John 

Radcliffe,  Engraver     ....     94 

Rain,  Steam,  and  Speed  .    .     .128 
Rawlinson's    "Turner's    Liber 
Studiorjim"   ......     60 

Redcliffe  Church,  Bristol ...     84 

Redding,  Cyrus 78,82 

Eeeve,   Lovejl,    description    of 

Turner  when  young    ...     31 
Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua .    ...    25 

Richmond 94 

^Richmondshirc,    Dr.   Whita- 
ker's  History  of"    ....     94 

Rising  Squall 34 

Ritchie,  Leitch 116 

"Rivers  of  England".  .  .  94,96 
"  Rivers  of  France "  .  .  115,116 
Roberts,  David  ....  23,  133 
Rogers,  Illustrations  to  99,1 13, 1 14 

Rome 109,  110 

Rome,  from  the  Vatican  .    .    .     97 

Rooker 23 

Rouen  Cathedral 137 

Ruskin,  J.  .    39,40,48,61,73,121, 
122,  124,  132 

Ruskin,   J.,  his  Collection  of 
Turner's  Drawings  .    .      94,  129 

Sandycombe  Lodge     .     85,  86,  101 
St.  Vincent's  Rocks,  Bristol,  View 
near .........    34 

Sandby,  Paul 23 

Sandby,  Tom 23 

School,  First,  at  New  Brentford  13 
Scott,  Sir  Walter  .  .  .  .  92,  99 

Shaw,  Dr 8 

Shipwreck,  The 50,  54 

Slave  Ship,  The 129 

Smith,  John  Raphael .    .    ,  15,  23 


Page 

Snowstorm 128 

Society  of  Artists 13 

Solus  Lodge 86 

Solway  Moss ...,,..     62 
"  Southern  Coast "...  47,  84,  99 

Spithead .     54 

Stanfield 120,  128 

Sun  rising  through  Vapour    54,  113 
Switzerland,  Sketches  in .     .    .     54 

T6m£raire,  The  Fighting .     .     .  1 18 

Temple  of  Jupiter 93 

Tenth  Plague 49 

Thomson,  of  Duddingstone  .    .     92 

Tomkison 13,  16 

Tornaro 113 

Totnes 94 

Townley 45 

Trimmer  (Vicar  of  Heston)    86,  87, 
88,91,  101,  108,  111 
Trimmer,  Miss,  attachment  of 

Turner  to 89,  90 

Troyes 137 

"Turner's  Cribs" 85 

"Turner  Gallery"  in  Harley 

Street  and  Queen  Anne  Street    85 
"Turner  and  Girtin's    Pictu- 
resque Views " 32 

Turner's  Gift     ....      78,  112 
Turner,  Charles,  engraver,  quar- 
rel with  Turner 58 

Turner,  Price,  uncle  ....     84 
Turner,    Thomas    Price,    first 
cousin   .     . 84 

Ulysses  and  Polyphemus  .      70,  107 

Vandevelde 28,50 

Varley      ...-.,..   23,  24 
Varnishing  days'   ...      99,  108 


CHRONOLOGY  OF  TURNER'S  LIFE. 


147 


Page 

Venice,  First  pictures  of .    .    .114 
Sketches  in  National  Gal- 
lery     114 

Venice  from  Madonna  della  Sa- 
lute   124 

Venice,  later  pictures  of  ...  126 

Venus  and  Adonis 52 

Vergil.     .    . 70 

Vignettes 113 

Vision,  from  "  Voyage  of  Co- 
lumbus"     114 

Wales.  First  Tour  in  .     .    .    .    32 

Walker,  J 32 

War,  the  Exile  and  the  Rock 

Limpet 130 

Warkworth  Castle 43 

Waterloo 130 

Watts,  Alaric 23,  31 


Page 

Wedmore's  "  Essay  on  Girtin  "    24 
Wells,  W.  F.     .     .     .     18,55,112 
Westminster  Abbey,  early  draw- 
ing of 14 

"Whalley,  Parish  of,"  draw- 
ings for 41 

What  you  Will 97 

Wheeler,  Mrs 18 

Whitaker,  Dr 41,  44 

Wilkie,  SirD 112,  128 

Will,  Turner's  .     .      112,139,140 
Wilson      ....      23,  -27,  38,  49 

Wolcot,  Dr 82 

Wreck  of  the  Minotaur    ...    50 
Wyatt,  Print  Publisher,  of  Ox- 
ford  86 

Wycliffe 94 


Yorkshire,  Tour  in 


34,40 


CHRONOLOGY   OF  TURNER'S   LIFE. 


Date. 

1775.    Born,  23rd  April  .        .        .       -^ 

1784.  Drawing  of  Margate  Church  .        . 

1785.  Goes  to  School  at  Brentford   . 
1789.     Student  of  Royal  Academy    . 

1791.  First  exhibits  at  Royal  Academy  . 

1792.  First  Tour  in  Wales 
1792.     Studio  in  Hand  Court    . 

1794.    First  engraving  from  Turner  published 
1793  or  1797.    First  exhibits  in  oil    . 
1794.     Noticed  by  the  Press 

Tour  in  the  North  of  England 

Elected  A.R.A 

Removes  to  Harley  Street 

Visits  Scotland 


1797. 
1799. 
1799. 
1800. 
1801  or  1802.  First  Tour  on  Continent 


Page 
6 
13 
15 
32 
32 
32 
32 
32 
34 
34 
40 
39 
75 
53 
53 


148  CHRONOLOGY  OF   TURNER'S  LIFE. 

Date.  Page 

1802.    Elected  RA .39 

1804.  Second  Tour  on  Continent      ...         .        .         .  76 

1805.  Paints  The  Shipwreck 50 

1807.  Commences "  Liber  Studiorum "      .         .         .        .         .  55 

1808.  Professor  of  Perspective — Takes  House  at  Hammersmith  75 

1811.  Exhibits  Apollo  and  the  Python       .         »         .         .         .<  67 
181  lor  1812.     Visits  Devonshire      .         .   -     .         .        .         .  79 

1812,  Town  address  changed  to  Queen  Anne  Street .        .         .  75 
1814.  Goes  to  Twickenham        .         .         .         .         ...  75 

1814.  Commences  Southern  Coast       .        .         .         .         .         .  84 

1815.  Exhibits  Crossing  the  Brook  and  Dido  Building  Carthage  .  93 
1819.  First  visit  to  Italy .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .  92 

1 823.  "  History  of  Richmondshire  "  published   ....  94 

1824.  "  Rivers  of  England "  published      ...        .        .  94 
1823.     Exhibits  Bay  of  Baits .         .  97 

1826.  Leaves  Twickenham 101 

1827,  Quarrels  with  Cooke       .         .        .        .        .        .         .  101 

1827.  "  England  and  Wales "  commenced  .        .        .        .        .  104 

1828.  Visits  Rome .109 

1829.  Exhibits  Ulysses  deriding  Polyphemus      .    -     .    -    .        .  107 

1830.  Death  of  his  Father Ill 

1830.  Illustrations  to  Rogers's  "Italy  "published     .         .        .113 

1831.  Makes  his  Will 112 

1833.    Exhibits  first  Venetian  Picture 114 

1833.     "  Rivers  of  France "  commenced 115 

1839.     Exhibits  Fighting  T£meraire 118 

1843.  Publication  of  "Modern  Painters"         .         .         .         .124 

1851.  Death   .  134 


u 


